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Interviews
My Art Guides is also an art blog updated daily to keep you in the know about what is going on in the art world. The editorial team helps you to get to know the vast expanse of the contemporary art world, narrowing it the essential topics we reckon to be the core of the current artistic fervour. Check out the latest Interviews we have been covering and to which we want to draw your attention.
Interviews
Beyond tradition: Caterina Frongia on weaving, migration and transformation
For Caterina Frongia, craftsmanship is not a practice of preservation but a language through which to speak about the present. Rooted in Sardinian weaving traditions while informed by contemporary visual culture, her work explores movement, migration and transformation as forces that continually reshape identities and knowledge. In this interview, Frongia reflects on the relationship between tradition and innovation, the nomadic nature of textiles, and the cultural landscape of Sardinia today.
Interviews
Merike Estna: Painting as a Living Organism
Merike Estna represents Estonia at the 61st Venice Biennale with The House of Leaking Sky, a process-based project curated by Natalia Sielewicz. Transforming a former church and present-day community centre in Castello into an open studio, Estna develops a monumental painting throughout the Biennale, allowing visitors to witness the work as it comes into being. Conceived as a living, performative and social medium rather than a finished, auratic object, her painting moves between canvas, architecture and everyday life, questioning established hierarchies while bringing artistic labour into dialogue with motherhood, care and collective forms of making. Mara Sartore met Estna inside the pavilion to discuss the evolving work, the women artists who shaped it, and how living and painting in Venice have become inseparable parts of the project.
Interviews
Inside the .ART Award: Ulvi Kasimov on Documentation, Digital Identity and Artistic Legacy
To mark the launch of the .ART Award, .ART founder Ulvi Kasimov shares his thoughts on the evolving role of documentation, digital identity, and artistic legacy. From the value of context to the importance of owning one's digital presence, he reflects on how artists can shape their practice in an increasingly digital world.
Interviews
Daria Dmytrenko’s Intrico: Creatures from the Subconscious Forest
As part of My Art Guides’ ongoing series of dialogues with artists featured in the Vetrina project at Vino Vero Venice, we are pleased to present an interview with artist Daria Dmytrenko.
Curated by Mara Sartore, the Vetrina project transforms the display window of Vino Vero into a dynamic platform for contemporary art, inviting women artists to activate the space with site-specific works.
For Vetrina#16, Dmytrenko presented Intrico, a site-specific installation where the subconscious is compared to a dense forest. The thickness of the trees represents the complexity and depth of the human mind, while the creatures glancing from the bushes are incarnations of the emotional states, memories, and nightmares. They inhabit the space silently and steadily, existing in a parallel time and dimension, not wishing to be discovered. The viewer can only peek carefully, without invading that balanced and untouched world.
For Vetrina#16, Dmytrenko presented Intrico, a site-specific installation where the subconscious is compared to a dense forest. The thickness of the trees represents the complexity and depth of the human mind, while the creatures glancing from the bushes are incarnations of the emotional states, memories, and nightmares. They inhabit the space silently and steadily, existing in a parallel time and dimension, not wishing to be discovered. The viewer can only peek carefully, without invading that balanced and untouched world.
Interviews
Stefano Cagol: We Are All Nauru
Credits:
Mara Sartore & Stefano Cagol @ Stefano Cagol, The Ice Monolith, After Land, 2026, Riva...
Interviews
Art Beyond the Runway: A Conversation with Vincent Lo Brutto on Air Service Basel
Credits:
Tomasz Kowalski, Untitled, 2026. Oil, gouache and pencil on jute, 100 × 70 cm (39 3/8 × 27...
Interviews
Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi on the Trilogy of Uncertainties
Credits:
1. Janis Rafa, Baby I’m Yours, Forever, 2026 in “Canicula,” Fondazione In Between Art...
Interviews
Robbie Fitzpatrick on the Art Market and the Making of Basel Social Club
RF – The fact that it remains open-ended is very important to us. Basel Social Club does have certain...
Interviews
The Materiality of Judy Chicago at Galleria Alberta Pane
JC – I think my explanation about how different materials allow different forms of expression addresses...
Interviews
The Unstable Life of Things: An Interview with Sophie Jung
Sophie Jung is a Swiss-Luxembourgish artist based in Basel whose practice moves fluidly between sculpture, installation, performance, text, and spoken narration. Working with found objects, fragments, and associative forms of storytelling, Jung creates environments in which language and material become unstable, poetic, and often ironic. Her work explores processes of accumulation, displacement, and transformation, generating tensions between intimacy and theatricality, humor and disorientation. Through assemblage and performative gestures, she investigates how meaning is constructed, interrupted, and continuously renegotiated within contemporary visual culture.
Interviews
Marta Barina and Chiara Carrera: A City After Dark
MB – More than a format, we have tried to build a method. In this case the language of projection grew...
Interviews
Caroline Corbetta on Kunsthaus Paradiso
CC – Yes. If it depended solely on me, I would stay here. I would become a new Venetian.
“Kunsthaus...
Interviews
Amin Jaffer on the Indian Pavilion 2026
AJ – Yes, absolutely. I love Venice. We have to remember that Venice is a ville portière — a port...
Interviews
David Černý: Artocalypsa and the dead presidents
From May 6th to November 2026, Il Teatro dell’Arte (NuoveFondamenta) in Venice presents Artocalypsa, a major exhibition by Czech artist David Černý, coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale. Bringing together large-scale sculptures, political provocations, and dystopian imagery, the exhibition reflects on contemporary Europe through satire, violence, and technological anxiety. This interview explores Černý’s longstanding engagement with political contradiction, the aesthetics of conflict, and the enduring ambiguity between innovation and destruction, tracing how his work confronts the collapse of collective ideals in an increasingly unstable world.
Interviews
Cristiana Collu in conversation with Mara Sartore
CC – For me, it is fundamental to place the word “dream” beside “political”. Doing so means...
Interviews
Barry X Ball: The Shape of Time
From 9 May, the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore will present “The Shape of Time”, a major survey of the American artist Barry X Ball’s sculptural practice, which brings together technological innovation and Renaissance tradition within Andrea Palladio’s architectural masterpiece. This interview explores Ball’s practice at the intersection of art history, technology, and material experimentation. Using 3D scanning, digital modelling, robotic carving, and handwork, he develops a sculptural language that redefines the possibilities and legacy of stone.
Interviews
Leo Frontini: Painting from the Subconscious in Unsettled Times
Leo Frontini is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice brings together classical draughtsmanship and oil painting traditions with an exploration of the subconscious. Yields of Fray, his first European exhibition, Presented by Private Waters at SPARC*-Spazio Arte Contemporanea on May 4, 5:30pm, running concurrently with the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Amah-Rose Abrams, the exhibition brings together 10 paintings, 5 drawings, and three sculptures created in Los Angeles in 2025 and 2026.
In this conversation, Frontini reflects on unraveling as both process and metaphor, the subconscious as a generative space for images, and the role of imagination as refuge, resistance, and renewal in a time marked by unrest.
In this conversation, Frontini reflects on unraveling as both process and metaphor, the subconscious as a generative space for images, and the role of imagination as refuge, resistance, and renewal in a time marked by unrest.
Interviews
David Landau
DL: Yes, certainly. But I do not wish to concern myself with politics, because I do not understand it...
Interviews
Semantics of the Heart: Being with Chiara Camoni
CC – Everyone comes with their own experience. I find it strange when artists say they want the audience...
Interviews
Nalini Malani: Of Woman Born – Memory, Myth, and the Urgency of Women’s Voices
In this interview for My Art Guides, Nalini Malani reflects on "Of Woman Born", a major site-specific installation commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art as an Official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Presented within the Magazzini del Sale, the work unfolds as a continually shifting 'thought chamber' where projections, sound, and memory converge around women, myth, and global conflict.
Through layered animations and immersive environments, Malani meditates on patriarchal violence, geopolitical accountability, and the suppressed agency of women, proposing empathy, interconnectedness, and the retelling of stories as necessary tools to imagine a more humane future.
Through layered animations and immersive environments, Malani meditates on patriarchal violence, geopolitical accountability, and the suppressed agency of women, proposing empathy, interconnectedness, and the retelling of stories as necessary tools to imagine a more humane future.
Interviews
Markus Reymann
MR – “Nature Speaks. Listening for Rights of Nature in Venice and Europe” sits in the broader idea...
Interviews
Antonio Marras and Milan: At the Core of a Multidisciplinary Practice
Creative director, designer, artist and storyteller, Marras has built a practice that spans fashion, visual arts, theatre and craft, producing a layered and highly distinctive visual imaginary. His work oscillates between memory and experimentation, between intimate dimension and collective narrative, always maintaining a strong drive towards the hybridisation of languages.
Today, with two projects underway in Milan – "Maria Lai | Antonio Marras: Paso Doble" at M77 Gallery and "Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia" at BUILDING BOX – and one in London at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, this attitude is particularly evident. The show at M77 presents a dialogue with Maria Lai, a key figure in his artistic journey; at BUILDING BOX, his work is situated within a broader reflection on textiles as a critical and contemporary language.
Marras thus confirms a practice that eludes any single definition, weaving together different forms of knowledge and expression, and reaffirming the value of gesture, materiality and storytelling in an increasingly fast-moving and dematerialised present.
Today, with two projects underway in Milan – "Maria Lai | Antonio Marras: Paso Doble" at M77 Gallery and "Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia" at BUILDING BOX – and one in London at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, this attitude is particularly evident. The show at M77 presents a dialogue with Maria Lai, a key figure in his artistic journey; at BUILDING BOX, his work is situated within a broader reflection on textiles as a critical and contemporary language.
Marras thus confirms a practice that eludes any single definition, weaving together different forms of knowledge and expression, and reaffirming the value of gesture, materiality and storytelling in an increasingly fast-moving and dematerialised present.
Interviews
Mario Codognato
MC – I would like this to become a place that is alive all year round, as far as logistical and economic...
Interviews
Wallace Chan’s Vessels of Other Worlds: A Monument of Jewellery in Venice and Shanghai
In this interview for My Art Guides, Wallace Chan reflects on a practice that transcends the boundaries between sculpture, jewellery art, and craftsmanship. Rooted in decades of experimentation with precious materials, his work moves seamlessly from the microscopic precision of jewellery to the monumental scale of “Vessels of Other Worlds” – a project unfolding between Venice and Shangai in which sculpture, space, and perception intertwine across physical and virtual dimensions.
The Venice exhibition opens on May 8, 2026, at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, while the parallel exhibition at the Long Museum in Shanghai will open July 18, 2026. Through this dual project, Chan explores themes of spirituality, transformation, and continuity, offering a vision of art as a space where material, philosophy, and perception converge.
The Venice exhibition opens on May 8, 2026, at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, while the parallel exhibition at the Long Museum in Shanghai will open July 18, 2026. Through this dual project, Chan explores themes of spirituality, transformation, and continuity, offering a vision of art as a space where material, philosophy, and perception converge.
