Maureen Paley - Youssef Nabil - Eileen Cooper OBE RA - James Watt CVO- Tom Fletcher CMG - Saleh Barakat-Sama Alshaibi-Myriam Boulos - Rania Matar - Zehra Doğan and Elettra Stamboulis - Dominic Chambers -Touria El Glaoui -Ali Cherri -Afifa Aleiby - Laure d’Hauteville and Joanna Chevalier-Larry Amponsah - Victor Ekpuk - Mohammed Omer Khalil - eL Seed - Ahmed Morsi - Aaron Cezar - Ashekman - Michael Landy Part I & II - Sarah Hermez - Natalie Gibson MBE - Helen Storey MBE - The Voice of a Generation Fashion Print Class 2018 Central St Martins - Art Dubai: Myrna Ayad Director and Shumon Basar - Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi - V&A: Kate Bailey - SHOWstudio: Emily Knight and Bex Cassie - Dr. Anthony Brandt - Hassan Hajjaj -Yannis Munro - Dr Benjamin Dix - Michaela Crimmin - Fiona Hawthorne - Hrair Sarkissian- Walid Ardhaoui - Rabih Kayrouz - Hayle Melim Gadelha - Charles Tripp -
NeSpoon is a Polish contemporary and street artist, working with ceramics, graffiti art, installations, design and art projects that relay human rights and global and social concerns. Starting in 2009, lace soon became her signature style, with ceramic street art at the heart of her work. Over the past 10 years, she has worked in almost 40 countries in Europe, Australia, Asia, America, Africa and New Zealand, and has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions, and events.
Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1960, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji lives and works in Amersfoort, Netherlands. He received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting and Plastic Art from the Academy of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 1987 and a High Diploma in Graphic Design from CHK Constantijn Huygens, Netherlands in 2000. The artist’s solo shows include Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2022); Museum Flehite, Amersfoort (2021); L'appartement 22 art, Morocco (2020); 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Brazil (2019), Ayyam Gallery (2019, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2011); Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2017); Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp (2016); Galerie Tanit, Munich (2016); Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut (2014); Stads Gallery, Amersfoort, Utrecht (2010); Station Museum, Houston (2008); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007).
Laure d'Hauteville lives and works in Paris as an artistic consultant who works with collectors, galleries and artists. Formerly a cultural journalist, she has been active on the art scene since 1991, working between France and the Middle East. Fueled by her passion for the arts of these regions, her career has been devoted to the promotion of intercultural dialogue between the Middle East and the West.
In 1998, she founded Artuel in Beirut, the first international modern and contemporary art fair in the region, which she directed and curated until 2005. During that period, she also created JABAL, a fair dedicated to the discovery and recognition of young emerging artists in Lebanon. In 2007 and 2008, she established the Artparis-Abu Dhabi Fair (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates). In 2010, she created and directed the Beirut Art Fair, followed by the Singapore Art Fair in 2014. From 2012 to 2018, she launched the Byblos Bank Award for Photography in Lebanon, which helped many photographers gain recognition on the international scene.
In 2021, she conceived and developed the MENART FAIR in Paris, the first fair dedicated to galleries presenting artists from the Middle East and North Africa (ME.NA), which she then succeeded in expanding to other European capitals.
D'Hauteville curated an exhibition at the abbey of Jumièges in July 2022 in collaboration with the Département de la Seine Maritime that did bring together sixteen photographers from the contemporary art scene in Lebanon.
Joanna Chevalier is an artistic director and advisor specialising in contemporary art from the Middle East. Born in Lebanon, she lives and works in Paris, France. She graduated in Political Science at the American University of Paris and founded TalentsVideo, an art film production and distribution company in 2005. In 2010, she produced and delivered ten films linking art and classical music, which were projected during the Nuit Blanche at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. The same year, she curated the exhibition "Who are you Peter?" at the Espace culturel Louis Vuitton. In the following years, she curated several exhibitions, including "Heartland" at the Beirut Exhibition Center, "Forms and Patterns" in collaboration with the Beirut Design Fair at the Maison Rabih Kayrouz and "La Valise d'Orphée" at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. She has also curated several exhibitions in auction houses, including "Michel Deverne" organised by Piasa Beirut ; "Pierre Malbec & Furniture and Art Objects" at Artcurial Beirut. And "From Beirut Art+Design Scene" at Piasa Paris. In 2019, she became the artistic director of the Beirut Art Fair, followed in 2021 by the Menart Fair, a position she still holds today.
At the same time, she founded CMS COLLECTION with Hervé Mikaeloff and François Sarkozy, which is both a joint collection and a tool to support the artists featured in it in their artistic development.
Geoffrey Batchen is the Professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford. His writing about art and photography has featured in numerous journals, books and exhibition catalogues and been translated into 21 languages. His books include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997, and in Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Slovenian, Chinese, Italian and Ukrainian); Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001, and in Chinese); Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004); William Henry Fox Talbot (2008, and in French); What of Shoes?: Van Gogh and Art History (2009, in German and English); Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010, in Japanese and English); Repetition och Skillnad (in Swedish, 2011); Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (2016); Obraz a diseminace (in Czech, 2016); More Wild Ideas (in Chinese, 2017); Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (2018) and Negative/Positive: A History of Photography (2021). He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012 + Turkish). His curated exhibitions have been shown at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro; the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK; the International Center of Photography in New York; the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne; the Izu Photo Museum in Shizuoka, Japan; the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik; the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington; and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, NZ.