Suboart Magazine

September 2025, #46

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For me, art, the making and the

appreciation of it, is a means for encounters with ourselves and

others.


- Médéric Corbin



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Interviews

Page 6 On Finding Value in the Minutiae of Life


with Sarah Poots


Page 22 Binding Layers of Material and Memory to the Present Moment


with Erin Daniels


Page 36 On the Shape of Abstraction and Keeping the Questions Alive


with Médéric Corbin


Page 48 Holding onto Memory and Identity through Art


with Rebecca Fruto


Page 56 On Converging Past and Present through Mark-making


with Yasemin Kackar-Demirel


Page 76 On Colors, Luminescence and Landscape Painting


with MK Lavigne


Page 102 Something Goofy, Something Scary and Something a Little Sad


with Gabor Bata


Page 110 On Spatial Reality And Space as an Active Body


with Lin Chang-Rong


Page 122 Talking Materials and Geometry


with Natalie Dunham


Featured artists


Suzanna Fields. 16

Susanna Cati 18

Emilia Evans-Munton. 20

Nathaniel Crow Mercer 30

Ashley Uskert. 32

Brittney Francis. 34

Filipa Figueiredo 46

Xiuzhuo Zhou 66

Clothilde L asserre 68

Rebecca Wickham. 70

Ar wen Duggan. 72

Annamária Rita Tóth. 74

Michael Ivan Schwartz. 84

Gabriel Campoy 86

Victoria Veedell 88

Madcollage 90

Guesswho 92

Miss Sunday 94

James Frew 96

Louise McGunnigle 98

Gina Restivo 100

Elahe 118

Aliza Katzman. 120

E d i t o r i a l 130

- 5 -


I am drawn toward the sentimental, the everyday and the

overlooked.


I like to think of the

paintings as exploring everyday archeologies.

- Sarah Poots



Rumination, 2024, Oil on canvas, 62 x 80 cm (Photo by Jules Lister)


- 7 -


I often think painting is like that for me,

a place where I can curate and collect my own narratives.

- Sarah Poots



Leftovers, 2024, oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm (Photo by Jules Lister)


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- Suboart Magazine -


Sarah Poots


On Finding Value in the Minutiae of Life


Left page: Sarah Poots photographed by Jules Lister


Hello Sarah, thank you for taking your time to answer our questions. For people who are not familiar with you and your work, could you please shortly introduce yourself?


Hi, I am Sarah Poots and I work as an artist in Notting- ham. I graduated from Glasgow School of Art and The Roy- al Academy Schools and spent time working as an artist in London before moving to Nottingham. My practise is based in painting and I work mainly in oil and gouache.


Can you tell us a bit about your path towards becoming a professional artist?


I started working in oils when I first arrived at Glasgow School of Art in the painting department. It was an ex- tremely special place to study art at the time as it was based in the purpose built Mackintosh painting studios. Besides from having some wonderful tutors and being surround- ed by students who also loved painting I think it was the building itself that allowed me to take myself seriously. It was the first time I felt I could work as a professional artist. From there, it has taken further studies at The Royal Acad- emy Schools and dedication to a daily practise of making.


Let’s speak about your work now, where you mix everyday objects with abstract, ambiguous backgrounds— is this play on different levels of reality something you actively pursue, or does it happen naturally?


I am very drawn to the everyday object but I often think of these in a fragmentary way. I love the short story by Virgina Woolf, ‘Solid Objects’ in which a young profes- sional is diverted off track by his obsession with collecting broken fragments, odds and ends and overlooked objects.

I often think painting is like that for me, a place where I can curate and collect my own narratives, in a way that is very self involved and removed from life’s realities. It’s an endeavour which becomes compelling once you get in- volved with it. So I think this idea of merging that which is recognisable with that which remains unknown is a vey deliberate device.


And more generally speaking, what are the main themes and elments in your work? What is it that you’re trying to explore in your practice?


I am drawn toward the sentimental, the everyday and the overlooked. I like to think of the paintings as exploring everyday archeologies. There is always a focus on what is hand made or self constructed and this feeds into creat- ing compositions that play with arrangement, order and display. The paintings are often littered with hand tied mementos and personal fragments, from twine to ribbon there is always a focus on process of touch.


“I am fascinated by uncovering a space that contains traces of human touch and how memory can be embedded here.”


The paintings are focused on creating a space which is in- timate and mediative, there is an exploration of the still- ness to be found within a shallow painterly space. I want to explore how these restricted spaces can become expansive and open.

You mainly paint with oil—what is it that you treasure about oil painting, what are the advantages and challeng- es that come for you with this technique?


I love how much can change with oil painting, I prefer working in thin layers, working in oil means that you can change you mind, that things can remain open. I also love the luminosity you get in working with oils, I always try to keep some elements of the ground that will remain in the final piece in order to transfer this feeling of light. It does take a long time to feel comfortable with oils and to know what to expect when using them.


I find your work to be a balance of very realistic objects with a dream-like, oniric atmosphere, and I’m curious to hear how you go about bringing your pieces to life. What does your process look like? Do you start with sketches?


Yes, I often start with quick sketches in pencil that can help to mark out a composition. Of these initial thoughts I usually spend some time working on paper, in particu- lar I make many gouache studies that help to realise what



Fruit & Flowers (detail), 2024 Oil on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm (Photo by Jules Lister)

might happen in the painting, what I might include or not. I then use these studies to help produce the works in oil, sometimes they translate smoothly and sometimes they might change in the making.


“The sources often come from a variety of material that allows for a shifting scale in how

they may be recognised.”


Speaking of work, is there anything you’re currently working on you’d like to share with us?


I am currently working on a new series of paintings that will focus more on the drawn line within my work. I am really excited about exploring this strand of the work, I have been preparing canvases and am itching to get started post summer.


Next, I wondered if there is a piece of yours that holds a special place or meaning for you?


I think ‘Rumination’, has become an important painting for me within this series, it contains a lot of what I am interested in. It began with cut outs from school activi- ty given to my daughter to create a picnic. I like how the fragments become a shorthand, a language of their own, how they refer to still life paintings and how they can form a compositions that has a sense of playfulness and mal- leability.


There is a lot of talk about “finding your own style” in the art world, more so when you’re getting started as an artist. What are your thoughts on that?


I think this is something that develops over time and something I have always thought is extremely important. I think it is very much the emphasis in British art educa- tion. I studied at the HGB in Leipzig for a term and there was a real focus on replication and imitation of the local style, this feels like an accessible and straightforward way

- Suboart Magazine -


to learn how to make a painting but then very hard to tran- sition into having your own voice. I am glad that this never really was a feature of my art education as a whole.


And before we wrap up with a few last questions, I’d like to speak a bit about everyaday life as an artist. What are some of the regular tasks you perform in your job?


There are 2 strands to this for me. One which involves reading, research and seeing shows, this is a daily part of the work and is endlessly enjoyable. Another strand is more career based and centres around seeking out oppor- tunities, applying for grants and replying to emails.


Sticking witht the topic of the artist’s work-life, I wonder if there are any routines or habits you follow that help you create your paintings? Or could you think of any other influence that has benefitted your practice?


Yes, I am lucky to be working in large space at the moment and it’s interesting how different spaces in the studio have acquired specific uses in the process of working. So a table and wall area has become a place where I work on gouache paintings, formulate ideas and create a sort of working wall. Then I have a room where paintings in the making exist, I can look at them from a distance, see how they op- erate together and then I bring them to another wall were I actually make the paintings.


And let’s finish our interview with five last questions. First, is there any advice you’d like to pass on to fellow artists, especially to those just starting out?


I think it’s important not to wait until all the conditions are perfect for making. Just start where you are, with what’s to hand and keep going.


Next, is there any upcoming event or project you’d like to share with us and our readers?


I am looking forward to being a part of wonderful painting survey called, ‘Flat Volume’ showing at A.P.T Gallery Lon- don in October. I was asked to be involved by Sarah Long-


Many Parts, 2024, Oil on canvas, 92 x 82 cm (Photo by Jules Lister)


worth West who has carefully curated the show and I am really looking forward to seeing how all the works coincide with each other in the space.


Any fellow emerging artists you’d like to recommend?


I have been enjoying getting to know the work of Stephanie Trow (@stefanietrow), I met her last year when she came for a studio visit and tour of my show, ’Placeholder’ in Nottingham. She is currently travelling the world with her family and setting up transitory studios at every stop, that is so inspiring. Her work is playful, gentle but with a dark and mysterious edge.


If there was only one thing that people could take away from your work, what would you want that to be?


That there is value to be found in the minutiae of life.


And lastly, please complete the following sentence:

When I create, I feel…


...both engaged and removed from the world.


Get in touch with Sarah: www.sarahpoots.com Instagram: @ sarah_poots

- Suboart Magazine -




Up: Drifter, 2024, Oil on Canvas,67 x 77 cm

Down: Sunset (Pairing), 2024, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 cm (Both photos by Jules Lister)


Tied, 2024, oil on canvas, 35 x 24 cm (Photo by Jules Lister)

Suzanna Fields


About Suzanna


Suzanna Fields grew up in Appalachia, and lives and works in Richmond, VA. She is the recipient of a Bethesda Painting Award, and a Liqutex Purchase Prize. Exhibitions include: Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke VA, Laurel Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS, University of Southern Mississippi Museum of Art, Hattiesburg, MS, Contemporary Art Center of Virgin- ia, Virginia Beach, VA. Residencies include the Studios at Key West, Mountain Lake Biological Station, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work is in collections in- cluding: the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Eleanor Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Wolford College, Capital One, Kimpton Hotels, Bill and Pam Royall, and Shepard and Amanda Fairey. She holds a MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA, a BA in Art and English from Mary Baldwin University, Staunton, VA, and studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University Oxford, UK.

Connections Between Unseen Systems


I am interested in the tension between the familiarity and foreignness of the natural world, how we idealize and me- diate it through technology, and how it persistently weaves its way into our subconscious. My work invites viewers to make connections between unseen systems, from the macro to micro, and to consider the fragile relationships between them. I use materials in a way that echoes organic pro- cesses, reflecting on notions of time, accretion and decay, and constant change. I wear away paint layers to exca- vate previous versions of the work or combine materials to create intricate interactions. I cover sections of the work with domes, making small microclimates, that allow me to alter materials as they slowly cure. Mapping fantastical, psychologically-tinged inner landscapes, ever-changing or- ganic forms combine with references to the decorative and glimpses of the grotesque to speak to both the connection and unease of our collective experiences with nature.


Get in touch with Suzanna: www.suzannafields.com Instagram: @suzannafields



Resonance 1, 2025

Ink and acrylic on Yupo 27 by 21 inches (Photo by David Hunter Hale)

Resonance 2, 2025

Ink and acrylic on Yupo, 27 by 21 inches (Photo by David Hunter Hale)



Up: Portal: Bogland Bloom, 2025, 10 by 10 inches

Down: Portal: Shift, 2025, 10 by 10 inches (left) / Portal: Great Branch Creek, 2025, 12 by 12 inches (right)

All works: Ink and acrylic on panel (Photos by David Hunter Hale)

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Susanna Cati


About the artist


Susanna Cati was born in Rieti and graduated from the Ac- cademia di Costume e Moda in Rome, Italy. She collaborat- ed with set designer Giovanni Licheri at the Teatro Argen- tina in Rome and worked as a stylist assistant for major Italian and French fashion brands. After mastering various textile techniques, she dedicated herself to designing and creating rugs and tapestries, producing unique pieces and design collections in collaboration with studios and com- panies in the sector.


In recent years, her research has focused on Fiber Art, leading her to exhibit in group and solo shows in Italy and abroad (Switzerland, Austria, Russia, the United King- dom), in private galleries and institutional spaces. One of her works is part of Trame d’Autore, the permanent civic collection of the City of Chieri (TO), and her installation Spears is included in the open-air contemporary art trail of the Municipality of Rivodutri. Recently, one of her projects was included in KIUB, winner of the Creative Living Lab grant by the Italian Ministry of Culture. Her ongoing ex- perimentation led her to engage in a textile artwork within the performative dimension of Lucia Di Pietro in a pro- ject promoted by Umbria Danza Festival and Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria.


Endless Dialectical Confrontations


My artistic practice emerges from a constant tension, a vis- ceral urgency fueled by a hunger that is both curiosity and disorientation. I am an eclectic artist, driven by an inner force that pushes me beyond the boundaries of the known, challenging every comfort zone in an almost feverish pur- suit of what I do not yet understand. Life absorbs me, flows through me, consumes me — and it is precisely from this intensity that I take shape and create. My works are the fruit of an irregular path, made of silent immersions in the studio and in reading, alternated with deep, unsettled


journeys. Every place becomes substance, every encoun- ter a seed. Alongside this physical wandering, another journey unfolds — more invisible, yet equally powerful: a continuous dialogue with human thought, ranging from philosophy to poetry, from science to psychology. From this unceasing exchange, from this industrious solitude, often unseen by the world, my works are born: unexpected pres- ences, born of body and soul, which in turn seek to ques- tion those who behold them.


Get in touch with Susanna: www.susannacati.art Instagram: @susannacati

- Suboart Magazine -




Up: Labyrinth, 2024, Papier-machè with gauze, 60 x 60 cm

Down: Opos, 2024, Papier-machè and crochet surfaces created by the artist, 120 x 60 cm

Left page: Inventory 20, 2022, Natural felt,cotton, ribbon, colored threads, applications and embroidery in 20 glass cases, 27 x 22 x 5 cm

Emilia Evans-Munton


About the Artist


Emilia’s sculptural work mainly centres around soft- sculpture and textiles. She has recently graduated from The Glasgow School of Art studying Sculpture and Envi- ronmental Art. Emilia is also the co-curator of multiple independent Exhibitions in situated in Glasgow and Lon- don. Her exhibitions aim to curatorially challenge the con- temporary art-world by giving a platform to young and emerging artists.


Rediscovering States of Childlike Fascination


Working between London and Glasgow, Emilia Ev- ans-Munton is a visual artist and curator exploring sculp- ture. Best known for her whimsical needle-felted sculp- tures, Emilia’s material-driven practice often encompasses themes of wit and nostalgia.


Largely influenced by her own childhood, her work speaks both personally and universally in the equally tender and harsh qualities of nostalgia that come to contextualise her sculptures. Her playful approach to sculpture takes form in large scale, often interactive sculptural objects that exist in their own uncanny and otherworldly space. Her works are frequently inspired by her own childhood memories and children’s puppet shows and toys.


Emilia works with intention of encouraging the audience to rediscover their own (perhaps repressed) states of child- like fascination and wonder through inviting interaction with her work. Her often anthropomorphic sculptures are often heavily process-driven and intuitively led by the tex- tural qualities of different mediums.


Up: Rubber Band Monster, 2025, Sculpture, 45 x 30 cm

Down: Mix And Match, 2024 , Interactive Sculpture, 90 x 45 cm Next page: The Dream of Horses, 2024

Sculpture, Textiles, 35 x 35 cm

(All photos by Callum Harrison)


Get in touch with Emilia: https://emiliaevansmunton.cargo.site Instagram: @emiliaevansmunton


To stitch; a thread or line that holds things together – this is the literal translation of the ancient Sanskrit word ‘sutra’.



Healing Sutra: The Shadow 3, 2024 Hand stitching, Vintage textiles, 12 x 17 in

(Photo by NeighboringStates)

Binding Layers of Material and

Memor y to the Present Moment


with



Daniels

Erin Daniels photographed by Lyla Bellino (@dustypaeonia)


Erin

Hi Erin, thank you for doing this interview with us. Let’s start with a few basics for people who are not familiar with you and your work—who are you and what do you do?


Hello, and thank you for this opportunity to share my work. I am a contemporary textile artist from the U.S.and my practice incorporates hand stitching and vintage tex- tiles.


Before speaking about your work, I’d like to go back in time for a moment. What are some of your earliest memories of being in touch with visual art?


My earliest memory of making is of sitting on the floor of my mother’s sewing room gathering scraps to create clothes for my dolls. My mother sewed beautiful clothing for me and my sister and the leftover pieces were often just enough to make my favorite doll a matching outfit. Sometimes hand sewn (BIG stitches) but just as likely to

be glued or stapled - whatever did the trick - these are the first things I vividly remember making. By the time I was five years old I was enrolled in private drawing and wa- tercolor classes with a local artist. This was encouraged by my grandmother (also an artist), who recognized my talent and love of creating at an early age.


Fast forward to 1993, you earn your BFA in Textile Design from Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, PA. Was working with textiles something you always knew you wanted to do?


No, despite my early, crude attempts at doll dressmaking, I focused solely on drawing and watercolors throughout my childhood and teen years. By the time I was considering colleges, I had made up my mind to become a botanical il- lustrator. Growing up in a very rural area, I was fascinated by the natural world and became quite adept at captur- ing the minute details of my surroundings. Honestly, I did not even know textiles were a “thing” until my first year

in college. The school put on a presentation detailing the different courses of study and as soon as I saw the textile presentation featuring weaving, surface design, and a fas- cinating variety of fiber techniques, I knew immediately this was my path. I remember that moment like it was yesterday!


I’d like to speak about your work now, particularly about your “Healing Sutras” series, which examines psycholog- ical and inherited wounds, oftentimes your own. Can you please tell me more about it and how it came to life?


“To stitch; a thread or line that

holds things together – this is the literal translation of the ancient Sanskrit word ‘sutra’.”


The “Healing Sutras” grew out of a significant life tran- sition–a way for me to process and heal through making. I was raising a young son on my own and thinking a lot about the notion of “women’s work” and behavioral pat- terns that get passed down through generations of a fami- ly. I was working with ink and thread on paper at the time, adding collage elements of paper dress patterns that I had inherited from my grandmother. I was really struggling with being too literal and the pieces felt “busy” and forced. I arranged a studio visit with a mentor who was familiar with my work (my drawing professor from college), and he looked around the studio, turned to me, and simply said “make the dress”. That was the beginning and end of the conversation.


The next day I got out my huge stash of vintage table lin- ens and started using the dress patterns to create child sized dress shapes which I then stained with walnut ink. The embroidery came as a natural “drawing” tool to ex- pand on and trace the stains created by the ink. It was like alchemy - all the materials I had previously been using to no avail suddenly came together to create these magical new works that embodied all the concepts I had been ex- ploring: legacy, lineage, and a sense of connection.

I read that all of the “Healing Sutras” are sewn on vintage fabric that has been passed down from women in your family...


Yes, the original pieces in the “Healing Sutras” series were all created out of inherited textiles. As I exhibited the work I started receiving amazing gifts of vintage textiles from admirers of my work. The pieces often came with stories of a beloved grandmother or other family member. I am honored to give these often-forgotten textiles a new life in my work. Rather than being packed away in an attic some- where they are now part of a bigger story. All my pieces are hand stitched, so I spend hours and hours handling these pieces and looking at them very closely. I have a very intimate connection to the work and a deep respect for the care and detail expressed by their original creators.



Healing Sutra 37, 2017

Hand stitching, walnut ink , vintage dress, linen, 34” w x 45” h


The series also has a follow-up series, titled “Healing Sutras: The Shadow.” I’d love to hear more about it and about how it connects to the initial “Healing Sutras” se- ries.

My new series, “Healing Sutras: The Shadow” is exploring similar concepts of lineage and belonging but from a dif- ferent lens, a different stage of life. Mid-life has brought a sense of clarity and equanimity that has translated into calmer, more outwardly peaceful work. Despite the large expanses of white in this new work, dark shapes simmer just below the surface.


“These fragments of vintage

garments portray hints of sadness and despair that often accompany a woman’s midlife physical/

emotional transition.”


I do think the following excerpt from my artist’s statement encompasses all of what these pieces contain: “…layers of memory and material bound together create a landscape of light and shadow. Depressions and contours are picked out in stitch, tracking an interior landscape made outwardly visible and visceral. Pleats and patterns create a rippling undercurrent beneath a surface of white; barely suppressed behind the stillness.”


Let’s talk about stitching now. You describe the act of stitching as a type of really slow drawing that has allowed you to express what drawing with pencils hasn’t been able to offer you. I’m curious to hear more about that and about your personal relationship with stitching.


Historically, so many women in my family have stitched - from quilters to seamstresses - and the act of putting nee- dle and thread to fabric feels part of my DNA. Each stitch represents a connection to the past, binding layers of ma- terial and memory to the present moment.


As for the process, stitching by hand is a slow, quiet and solitary act which allows for contemplation. It is fasci- nating to see movement and form slowly unfold from the marks, something that might be missed in a more imme- diate technique such as drawing or painting. The medita- tive act of stitching allows my brain to relax and helps me

become aware of the present moment. The escape into a tactile and repetitive process has become increasingly im- portant to me to relieve the stress of a fast-paced digital world.


Speaking about stitching, I’d like to talk about your cre- ative process for a moment. How do you usually go about starting a new piece and what are the following steps? And is there any stage of the process you find especially satisfying?


Starting a new piece is a very intuitive process for me and is the most energizing stage of a work. I have a huge stash of vintage linens that I start pulling out and laying around my studio. It is impossible to describe, but when I find the right piece of fabric something just “clicks” in my brain, and I lay it to the side. Once I have a selection of fabric/ garments I start arranging them on my worktable. Again, when the composition is right, I just get a feeling. I am very energized by seeing this initial arrangement unfold and love this first stage of the process. I then use very fine entomology pins to secure the layers and folds of fabric be-



Healing Sutra: The Shadow 1, 2024 Hand stitching, Vintage textiles, 36 x 36 in

(Photo by NeighboringStates)

fore I begin stitching. Using a single ply of white embroi- dery thread, I follow the contours and folds of the fabric as guides to my mark making - nothing is planned or marked out ahead of time. I am mesmerized by the fluid way the shapes and contours slowly unfold.


Back to the “Healing Sutras” series for a moment—I read that it carries many layers of meaning, you write about it on your website. I wonder if it is important to you to share these meanings with the viewers of your work or if you prefer to leave room for interpretation?


I prefer to allow the viewer to interpret my work and add their own story to it. Or maybe they simply enjoy it as a beautiful piece of craftsmanship and that is wonderful too. Often additional layers of meaning reveal themselves to me as I’m working on a piece or even years later, so I hesitate to attach a specific meaning. For me they are about healing and letting go which can be interpreted in so many ways. I can only hope that the viewer feels SOMETHING when they view my work, but I try not to dictate what that emotion should be.


Our interview is coming to an end, so I have four more questions for you. First, what have you been inspired by lately?


I have always been particularly inspired by words and re- cently read “Hagstone” by Irish author Sinéad Gleeson. I think I have copied half of her book into my sketchbook but the one line that continually comes back to me is the following description which you can see direct inspiration from in my newest work: “the inky water moves in pleats” I have so many beautiful textiles in my collection, and it can be very tempting to focus on the decorative aspects and get too “precious”. Two artists whose work I admire and continually turn to for a reminder that “less is more” are the contemporary English potter and writer Edmund de Waal and Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi (d. 1916). The work of both artists exhibits an exquisite peace that I can only strive for in my own work. In addition to his quietly powerful pottery, de Waal’s autobiographical “The Hare with Amber Eyes” is a beautifully written testament to legacy, lineage, and the importance of Art.



Studio Inspiration from Erin Daniels’ studio in Southern New Jersey, USA


Is there any upcoming project you’d like to share with us and our readers?


My work is in great company in the following publication to be released in October of this year, Le fil dans l’art con- temporain - 125 artistes au cœur de la création (Thread in Con- temporary Art - 125 Artists at the Heart of Creation), Charlotte Vannier - Éditions Pyramyd (@pyramyd_editions).


Any fellow artists you’d like to recommend?


I would love to give a shout out to my voice of reason and “best friend in art”, Christine Mauersberger . Christine is a supremely dedicated and talented multi-disciplinary artist who has been my sounding board for the last 20 years. Working alone in the studio every day can be isolating, and I can’t say enough for the friendship we have nurtured as our art practices have developed (@chris._mauersberger).


And last one, if there was only one thing people could take away from your work, what would you want that to be?


I would encourage everyone, artist or not, to try your hand at creating something. Try to let go of expectations and enjoy the process as there is great joy in making something with your own hands.


Get in touch with Erin: erindanielsart.com Instagram: @ErinDaniels_Artist

- Suboart Magazine -


Nathaniel Crow Mercer


Speaking through Silence


Mercer’s ceramic sculptures explore the vulnerability of writing, especially the discomfort of exposing person- al prose. He prioritises process over outcome, mimicking A-sized pages within thin clay and porcelain sheets that are often torn, crumpled, or blank—symbols of incomple- tion. Scrolls inscribed with unreadable codes act as mute stand-ins for concealed words, displayed in vitrines that echo the format of a page. This duality reflects the before and after of writing, where absence replaces legibility. Mercer is drawn to the intimacy of clay, where working with his hands mirrors the quiet of pen on paper. Work- ing in series embraces the kiln’s unpredictability and re- sists porcelain’s preciousness. The tension between ceramic weight and paper’s lightness invites reflection on material truth. Influenced by language, poetry, and artists such as Cornelia Parker and Edmund de Waal, Mercer draws on calligraphic and clay traditions to create small-scale works that favour presence over monumentality—sculptures that speak through silence, concealment, and quiet form.


About the artist


Nathaniel Mercer is a hand builder ceramicist and poet from East London. Growing up a bookworm in a small town on the outskirts of London made Mercer a writer who looked to the visual arts as a more abstracted form of expression from poetry prose and subsequently found ce- ramics. Mercer explores themes of vulnerability of writing, absence often replacing the legibility of his texts that are written onto mimicked sheets of paper made of porcelain, half covered or hidden. Mercer studied a Fine Art Extended Diploma and Foundation year in the City of Islington Col- lege and continued his studies with a bachelor’s degree of Fine Art at The University of Leeds in 2025. Mercer has ex- hibited in various group shows such as ‘MAKE NO BONES’ in June of 2025, ‘Milk-teeth’ in April 2024 as well as a solo exhibition ‘Sounds of Shaped Silence’ in October 2024 and has featured in the Gryphon newspaper.


Up: Words, Becoming, 2025, ceramics, 3.7 m x 2.1 m Center: Forgets, 2025, Ceramics, varied sizes

Down: Burnout, 2025, Ceramics, 29,7 x 42 cm


Get in touch with Nathaniel on Instagram: @nathaniel.mercer. x



Up: Willow, 2024, Ceramics, 21 x 29,7 cm

Down: Letters To Andy, 2025, Ceramics, 1 x 1.5 m

- Suboart Magazine -


Ashley Uskert




About Ashley


Ashley Uskert (b. 2002) is a digital and analog photogra- pher living in the Ozarks of Bentonville, Arkansas. She is engaged by the land she has moved to and fro that are seemingly mundane yet ever-changing through continu- ous observations and research. Ashley received her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and has exhibited around the Kansas City Metro. Her current project Balance, exhibit- ed at Vulpes Bastille, East Building Gallery, and the Emily and Todd Voth Artspace, observes the ecological commu- nity within the confines of a specific forest. Ashley’s work bridges the gap between scientific research and the every- day mundane into photographic materials that communi- cate the importance of our sacred lands.


Get in touch with Ashley on Instagram: @ashleyuskert.art

About My Practice


I was born in Indiana but lived most of my life in Benton- ville, Arkansas where I’ve witnessed the growing changes. Bentonville was a little town where everyone knew each other’s names, the traffic was nonexistent, and the county fair was a big deal. With not much to do, I had to find the beauty within the ordinary. My photographic practice engages in the mundane with observations that relates to researched ecological topics. My current project titled Bal- ance, observes the ecological community within the con- fines of a specific forest. The forest was in Kansas City, Missouri where most people wouldn’t think a forest filled with a vast mycorrhizal network and saprotrophic mush- rooms could be on the outskirts of a city. Photography for me is to bridge the gap between scientific research and the mundane in a series of observations, research, notetaking, and documenting.

- Suboart Magazine -




Up: Normandy, 2025, 17.28 x 11.52 in / Down: Normandy Stump, 2025, 17.28 x 11.52 in

Left page: Melaleuea Quinquenervia, 2025, 11.52 x 17.28 in (left) / WailukuPine, 2025, 11.52 x 17.28 in (right) All works: Digital Photography

Brittney Francis


About Brittney


Brittney Francis (b. 1997) is a collage-based artist from The Bronx whose work explores themes of Black womanhood, love, and grief through a retro-inspired lens. Her work is sincere, nostalgic and witty, creating thought-provoking visual compositions. In 2024, she completed an artist res- idency with BronxArtSpace on Governors Island. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in Texas, New York, and online in 2025. Brittney holds a BFA in Graphic Design with a double major of Art History and Spanish from SUNY Pur- chase.



Not Separate, 2024 Collage



In My Head, 2023, Digital Collage Next page: Cheers, 2023, Digital Collage


About My Work


I am deeply passionate about storytelling through collage. Using magazines, scans, photo albums, papers, fabrics, and found materials, I create works that range from narra- tive and vulnerable to surreal and satirical. I layer images, text, and textures to compose of collages that serve an ex- ploration of memory, identity, and emotion.


Get in touch with Brittney: brittneyfr.wixsite.com/design

Instagram: @bajanbrittney


For me, art, the making and the

appreciation of it, is a means for

encounters with ourselves and

others.


- Médéric Corbin



Triptyque avec peinture jaune (Triptych with Yellow Painting), 2025 Colored pencils and oil paint on linen canvas, 50 x 135 cm

(Photo by Antoine Lussier)

Médéric Corbin


On the Shape of Abstraction and Keeping the Questions Alive


Canadian artist Médéric Corbin photographed by Mathieu Hénault


Hello Médéric, thank you for speaking with me today. We like to start our conversations with a look into the past, back to where it all began—what were your beginnings in the arts?


Hello! First, thank you for your interest in my work and for the interview. I am really pleased to be with you today. To answer your question, I should mention that art has not always been my natural path. I’ve always been quite curi- ous and interested in various things, including mathemat- ics, politics, physics, sports... In school, I was aiming for architecture studies. If I had not stopped school for more or less a year due to severe concussions, maybe I would not be an artist today. During my recovery time, I started to paint out of a need to express myself and to keep busy. I was using leftover paint cans: a can of black and a can of white. I was painting portraits in a certain realistic man- ner. It was a way to release my energy, my thoughts, my frustration, and my emotions….

And once your recovery year was over, how did your prac- tice and interest in art evolve?


After my recovery year, I kept exploring different subjects and mediums as I was finishing my college studies. And then, it was time to apply to universities. I thought, “if I want to give art a chance, it has to be now”. Therefore, I applied naively to the two universities in Montréal where there was an art program. I got accepted to both and I picked Concordia University mostly to improve my English. At that time, I was unaware that I was entering one of the best art schools in Canada. Fast forward four years of uni- versity, the pandemic, and the discovery of the contempo- rary art world; here we are. I have my studio in Montréal, and my main occupation is being an artist. It still sounds weird to my ears when I say that. Maybe I’ll get used to it one day. I’ve never doubted since I got into university that art was the “right choice”, if it was a choice at all. It might be a good sign.

Let’s speak about your work now. In your statement you write that you create to “awaken our existential needs, particularly those to reflect and to situate ourselves with- in a logic greater than our individuality.” Can you please tell me more about that and about your work in general?


I think I can say that this excerpt corresponds to my defi- nition of art; the way I’ve been seeing and understanding art from the beginning. I haven’t used these words since the beginning, but the idea has always been there.


“For me, art, the making and the appreciation of it, is a means for encounters with

ourselves and others.”


There are physiological and physical human needs. I will let the experts explain what these really are. In my state- ment, when I write “existential needs”, I mean the need to exist, to think. No matter what background you come from or where you live, you can be wealthy, poor, healthy, unhealthy, depressed, or the happiest person… the simple fact that you are alive comes with questions. These ques- tions might come more often for some people or at dif- ferent moments in their life. Art and collective thinking are there to keep these questions alive, to share them, and sometimes to awaken some that have been sleeping for too long.


There are some questions that we can answer and there are others that we can’t, or for which we will never be sure of the answers. The latter are those that interest me the most. They are the ones that give us permission to try, to argue, to reformulate and to suggest without knowing. In a nutshell, they are the ones that make us create con- cepts, and they are the ones that keep us wanting, search- ing. From what I understand, this is art, creating concepts and searching. In my practice, it takes mainly the form of paintings or sculptures, but it really can be anything. And, more specifically, in my practice it takes the form of repe- tition and duplication. I have recurring images.

In comparison to other fields of study or work, where peo- ple dig into subjects so deeply that vulgarization becomes an issue, I see art as the opportunity to start again and again with the same study of a specific question or idea. Instead of digging until I get captured in my own hole, I make many little holes, all quite alike but with some small modifications. It is not by trying to answer an unanswer- able question once that I will reach satisfaction and that I will move on. Therefore, I try again by painting every composition at least twice. The “questions” in my works are visual symbols or repetitive imagery that, I think, will be with me forever.


Your work lies between figuration and abstraction, fig- ures are recognizable yet as viewers, we can never be sure of their exact contours, of who or what they really are. Have you always worked this way or did this play with the figurative and the abstract enter your practice over time?


It did happen over time, good guess. As I said earlier, I come from “realistic” depictions of faces. The funny thing is, at the beginning, I had difficulties with abstracting things. My very first sketchbook is filled with attempts of abstracting faces and bodies. I really wanted them to look more loose, more sketchy, more cartoony, or more ab- stract, but I had a hard time deciding what information to get rid of and which to keep.



Preliminary Painting, 2025 (Photo by Antoine Lussier) Coloured Pencils On Linen, 32 x 36 cm

“For example, I didn’t know what shape an ‘abstracted eye’ should have. So, I think it comes from there: feeling the need to

abstract things, to add layers of interpretation, to add

to the mystery.”


But at the same time, it must come from something specif- ic, some depiction of something I know; I must be ground- ed somewhere. For some abstract or conceptual artists, this grounding can probably be an emotion or anything else. But for me, it must be the projection of the emo- tion into something I can recognize. And until now, these things I recognize have been figurative. In other words, I must be able to link my art projects to one or two words, like the “body folded onto itself”. That’s it. That is what I’ve been painting for the past two years.


Could you pick an example to explain more in detail what you mean?


Sure! For example, “Peinture à reprendre II” (Painting to be Reworked II) follows the same pattern as do all my re- cent paintings: I sketch a simplified body, a head with one ear, two arms, and two legs on a piece of paper. I try to make the body fit in a square by contorting and twisting it. When I am satisfied with the sketch, I take a picture of it, and I perfect it digitally. I rework the lines, the pro- portions, and the angles. For example, I make sure both hands are the same size… Then I order stretchers with the same proportions as my final drawing. Most of the time, my sketches end up not being perfect squares because I try to get rid of as much background as possible; I want the body to occupy most of the space. Then I prepare my can- vas, and I project my drawing on it. And, finally, I paint.


I work and rework the colours, using different strategies to make things happen. In “Peinture à reprendre II” there is a green underpainting, a scumbled red, a scumbled blue and a glazed yellow. On top of all that, I added, with oil sticks, the early hand-drawn sketches of the painting I had

done when trying to find the perfect placement of the body parts. I added sketches on top of a “finished painting”, and I named it “Painting to be Reworked”.


These are some of the strategies I’ve employed in the past few years to paint bodies folded onto themselves. It is al- ways the same thing, the same concept, but the outcome is determined by the early sketches and the technical strate- gies I decide to employ along the way.


You just mentioned working and reworking the colours, so I’d like to take a moment to dive deeper into the topic. What is your relationship with colours and what role do they play in your work? I would guess they are an impor- tant element in your practice...


The colours! Indeed, they play a major role. As I entered university in 2019, I didn’t know what was “my thing” in art, except for the fact that my art was about being alive. But I saw that my classmates knew what they were do- ing. They already had their nice statement written, they had “their concept”, their way of doing things. I was a guy painting black and white faces in the basement of his parents’ house. So, I thought, “why not challenge myself using colours and why not make colours the central aspect of my work”.



Blue Painting, 2025

Oil Paint On Linen, 32 x 36 cm (Photo by Antoine Lussier)

Then I started reading, I was buying every book that was recommended to me about colours, and I wrote essays on colours. I made it one of my subjects for my history and theory courses. And now, here we are. I have concepts and colour theories at the back of my mind, and I paint. I used to reference theories and colour concepts I had read about in my works that I found interesting, but I got rid of that. It was too rigid and boring. I prefer picking up colours freely. So, I can’t really say where they come from. I know some things come by instinct, but sometimes it is more unconscious theory as well.


“And sometimes, when I have a colour problem to resolve in a painting, I employ a specific

strategy. Classic things, like using a warmer colour next to another one to make it look colder.

It is as simple as that.”


Next, I’m curious to know more about your exhibition “Somewhere Between Desires And Possibilities,” which took place this past May at Grover Building in Montreal. Can you please tell me more about it?


Sure. As I mentioned before, I’ve been working for the past few years, on one simple subject, the folded onto itself body. A little more than two years ago, it revealed itself as the concept or idea that I had to be working on for the next year. It had been floating around, and it was now time to give it more attention. My last exhibition is the outcome of this: around 10-15 paintings from my production over the last two years depicting simplified and contorted bodies.


As I started working on this project, I began reflecting on the narrative that would accompany the paintings. Com- ing close to the date of the exhibition, I realized that the narrative had not stopped evolving. I had not stopped re- working my text, reorganizing my ideas, reconsidering some thoughts, and, more importantly, renaming the ex- hibition. So, I’ve translated that observation into words. I



Quelque part entre désirs et possibles, 2025 (Somewhere Beetween Desires and Possibilities) Installation shot (Photo by Antoine Lussier)


wrote a text about all the concepts and titles I had come up with to describe my paintings and that could not satisfy me enough for some reason. But at the same time, I could not simply get rid of them. They were all quite important to me. In other words, I wanted to write things, but the words felt too rigid, too hermetic. There was always some- thing else to add. This made me realize that I have more difficulty getting satisfied with a text I write than with a piece I make. I feel limited working with words… And there we were, there was an exhibition about being trapped somewhere between possibilities and desires, or capacities and ideas, depicting trapped bodies on the surface of the canvases.


I saw that many of the works from this exhibition are large-scale paintings, more than one meter on each side. I could imagine that creating these pieces was a very physical, hands-on activity. Can you please speak a bit about bringing them to life?


These paintings had to be really small or really big. I want- ed the viewers to be absorbed by the scale of the paintings or to force an intimate projection of one’s body into a small depiction of a body.


My studio is not that big, around 3 x 5 meters. And I have only one wall on which I can hang things. The biggest paintings in the show were just about 2 x 2 meters, and I was working on almost all the paintings at the same time. I had to be ingenious, so I built a rolling rack to store the

paintings. I also had two paintings drying on each side of what I call my drying rack, which is, in fact, a heavy piece of metal put on top of a wheeled piece of wood. Everything rolls, because I must move things around all the time. And finally, I had the painting I was working on at the moment on my wall. As you can see, I foreplan things. However, painting for me is the opposite of that. It is the moment of free thinking, contemplation and meditation. I go to the studio more or less every second day, but I try not to paint if I know that I must stop at a specific time. Therefore, I do

other things, I plan other projects, haha…


“To paint is to be schedule-free, it is being able to be in the studio

as long as the painting wants you to be there. Consequently, I try to have everything set up for those

special moments to happen.”

Our little chat is already coming to an end, so I have two last questions for you. First, is there any project you’d love to see happening in the nearer or farther future? A dream project so to speak?


I’ll answer this question because it will force me to do so. I like this idea, saying out loud what I hope to see hap- pen and making it happen out of pride. So here we go. One day, there will be an exhibition of my work that will consist of really small busts of screaming faces mounted on slim metal rods. The busts will be wearing oversized ruffled collars.


I look forward to seeing that! And last one, if there was only one thing that people could remember from your work, what would you want that to be?


I’d like them to realize that I really do not know what I’m doing, even though I may seem like I do!


Get in touch with Médéric on Instagram: @medericcorbin



Left: Conceptual Painting with a Humain Figure Duplication XI, 2024, Colored Pencils & Oil Paint On Linen, 28 x 30 cm

Right: Conceptual Painting with a Humain Figure Duplication VI XI & III, 2024-25, Colored Pencils & Oil Paint On Linen, 28 x 30 cm each

Next page, up: Peinture à reprendre II (Painting to be reworked II), 2024-25, Oil paint and Oil sticks on linen canvas, 183 x 183 cm Next page, down: Conceptual Painting with a Human Figure I & II, 2025, Oil paint on linen canvas, 170 x 183 cm each

(All Photos by Antoine Lussier)

- Suboart Magazine -




Art and collective

thinking are there to keep these questions alive, to share them, and sometimes to

awaken some that have been sleeping for too long.

- Médéric Corbin



Peinture à finir II (Painting To Finish II), 2024 Oil Paint And Graphite On Cotton, 107 x 107 cm

Filipa Figueiredo


About Filipa and Her Work


Filipa Figueiredo’s work is characterized by the use of nat- ural pigments. She learned how to make natural pigments in 2009 when she went to India to learn and develop the technique of ancient paintings “Pata-Chitras”, through the Jagannath Vedic Reserch Center in Puri. Here she sharpens his interest in natural pigments and learns from her mas- ter/teacher to develop them step by step. Enthusiastic about the context, she starts a research work on these paintings that extends to the cities of Bhubaneswar and Kolkata. She would only start using natural pigments in her works in 2019, 10 years after learning how to make them.


In recent years, all her series of paintings have been de- veloped using natural pigments made by her and brought from the most diverse places in the world. Japanese ink is another material that is often present in his graphic compositions. The support of the paintings is usually en- graving paper in large formats. The series of paintings are allusive to atmospheres and impressions of places, trying to capture and refer to silence and all its associated conno- tations and sensations. All of them include concepts such as amplitude, observation and repetition of the pause.


In recent years, she has had several solo and group exhi- bitions in various locations of the world like South Korea, Peru, Brazil and now she is participating in the Intercon- tinental Bienale ( Argentina, Brazil, Panama and Puerto Rico). This month she will have a solo exhibition in a gal- lery in Sweden and in a Museum, in Coimbra, Portugal.


Get in touch with Filipa:

https://filipafigueiredo.squarespace.com Instagram: @filipafigueiredoff


All works: First Things First, 2025 Natural pigments on paper

(All photos by Filipe Braga)

- Suboart Magazine -




Up & Down: First Things First, 2025, Natural pigments on paper (Photos by Filipe Braga)

In my

reinterpretation of Fotoescultura,

I explore the idea of reincarnation as a metaphor for the way we hold onto memory and

identity.


- Rebecca Fruto


Right page: Rained in, adolesence, 2025

Plexiglass, wood, acrylic, vinyl and tile, 48 x 36 in

Holding onto Memor y and Identity

through Art


Rebecca

Fruto

with



Self-portrait by Rebecca Fruto


Hello Rebecca, thank you for doing this interview with us. Let’s start with a few basics, for people who are not familiar with you and your work. Who are you and what do you do?


Hello, I’m Rebecca Fruto, an artist raised between places. I earned my BA at California State University Bakersfield, where I began to develop the idea of reinterpreting person- al history and narrative.


You describe your work as “resurfacing the complex lay- ers of loss, memory, and identity rooted in the instability of home and the elusive comfort of the past.” Can you please tell us more about it?


Through my work, subtle truths about my psyche come to light. It’s both disorienting and grounding to understand experiences, the more I analysed them at different periods. I think this has become a common theme lately, where re- living past experiences, whether good or bad, is safer than

not knowing what the future entails, and that’s a scary thought. My work carries the place I come from. I men- tioned earlier I was raised between places, meaning I’m not too sure myself. Before the age of nineteen, I had fif- teen homes. I grew up financially unstable, so my parents worked hard by buying fixer-upper homes and renovating them. My sister and I helped in any way we could, painting the house, pulling wheelbarrows of dry grass, laying tile spacers, and other tasks. Calling these houses fixer-uppers feels like it just glazes over the reality of how abandoned these homes were.


“Times were hard, but I find comfort in understanding how it

has shaped the person I am. This idea of reinterpreting experiences is

what my art reflects.”

A significant influence on your work is Fotoescultura, a traditional Mexican art form that combines photography and sculpture to memorialize loved ones. When did you first come across Fotoescultura and how do you use it in your practice?


The first time I came across the mention of Fotoescultura was in Geraldine A. Johnson’s “The Life of Objects,” and I became curious about this intersection of photography and sculpture. Upon searching for more insights on this practice, I realized that the information about this art form is scarce. Fotoescultura emerged from Mexico and later spread to Mexican American communities across borders and generations. They were made to honour a loved one as a part of grief, everyday life, and cultural threads.


“In my reinterpretation of

Fotoescultura, I explore the idea

of reincarnation as a metaphor for the way we hold onto memory

and identity.”


I want to see where the study of this tradition takes me, as I not only memorialize loved ones, but also experiences, places, and imprints.


Next, I’d like to know more about your most recent, on- going series. I read that you use past paintings to create new works...


That’s right, in my ongoing series, I breathe new life into past paintings, reflecting how time shapes my percep- tion of remembrance. The process involves superimposing a past painting with its reference image, transferring it onto canvas using HTV transfer paper, and then painting around it to give a renewed softness and perspective to an experience. In the past year, I’ve been working with new materials that create shifts in color in the light, such as holographic vinyl and dichroic glass. This is my way of physically reincarnating a memory.

“I’m also interested in this back and forth between traditional materials that have transcended time and digital materials like

printers that I use in my art.”


A piece that stands out to me is “Rained In, adolescence.”

Can you please tell me more about it?


This artwork is my first real try at creating a Fotoescultura, and it’s still my largest one so far. Traditionally, they are between six to twelve inches in height, while “Rained in, adolescence” stands at forty-eight inches. In this piece, I used primarily construction materials to reveal themes of loss and personal growth. Materials used include wood, plexiglass, tile, and construction glue.


I often depict my family in my art because we’ve had sim- ilar experiences, so really, the artworks almost feel like self-portraits for me. Feelings of dissociation, missing out, but also comfort in repetition are what’s presented in this piece.



From the blueprint, 2025

Oil, vinyl, and htv transfer paper on canvas, 30 x 30 in

“The instability of my past also affected my relationships, never really getting past the surface, and an inability to connect.”


The umbrella represents this comfort from the cold and rain. This, combined with growing up a part of Gen Z, as technology began to be implemented everywhere, affected my communication.


All the tension in these conflicting ideas is realized uti- lizing Fotoescultura. This piece took about four months, where most of that time I spent intimidated to start be- cause I was working with an idea that felt challenging, being primarily a painter. I spent the longest time wood- carving the details on the side to give a relief effect to the wood. It was important for me to continue to find a balance between digital and traditional materials.


Is there any other piece you’d like to speak about more in detail?


Yes, actually, I wanted to talk a bit about a piece titled “From the blueprint,” which is the reincarnation of an- other painting titled “The American Dream.” What was important for me to show was this disconnect from a real place that felt like a fantasy to me. My dad has always wanted to design and build a house in his home country. I grew up seeing drawings of blueprints and designs in every sketchbook around the house, a dream of his that has just been realized. I visited this house at an early stage, when the foundation was just laid, and I have not seen it since, even though it is now in its final stages of completion. What I mean is, since I haven’t seen the completed house in person, my imagination fills in the gaps of my curios- ity, and this is what I am capturing in this painting. For me, this house represents the true American dream for my parents.


A question we ask in all of our interviews is about the cre- ative process. Could you please share some insight about yours with us?

My process comes from a lot of wonder and reflection. I always ask myself how I can make my paintings induce more curiosity while also bringing some reality to them. Oftentimes, I paint in silence because I find I cannot focus on making decisions in the noise. These decisions include color choice, subject matter, texture, and other composi- tional traits of an artwork. I also like to meditate on the reason why I chose to paint something and how I can ex- aggerate an element in the piece. Although this is the most important part, my favourite is when I feel confident in the painting in front of me and I’ve reached a point where these choices come naturally.


Before the actual work usually comes the inspiration; I read that you are especially inspired by stories...


That’s right. I’m inspired by stories, the ones that are real, but when you first hear about them, they feel like from a different world. I recently learned of the salt flats of Cuyutlán in Colima, Mexico, the state where my parents are from.


Before knowing the process and the ecological significance, I looked at this place as a city that only appears once for a few months in a year, a glorified version of it. It sounds magical when you put it this way, and I’m drawn to that. However, the reality is that collecting the salt is hard work, and the reason it is said to be a city is because the workers build temporary homes of cardboard so they can continue to collect salt, as the time to do so is limited. These are temporary homes, and it’s these realities that make me feel like I should question where some stories come from more often, how it is made, and what their significance is. An example of my inspiration from stories can be seen in my painting “Sailfish.” I explore a version of my parents’ story that I only know from what they’ve told me.


“As an artist, I’m familiar with placing myself in others’

shoes and wondering who I would be if I had gone through their experiences.”

Our conversation is already coming to an end, so let’s wrap up with two last questions. First, when you are the viewer and not the author of an artwork, what is it that draws you towards a piece of art?


What usually draws my eyes is brushwork, when I’m able to imagine where the artist added their colors and brush marks. It’s so satisfying for me to see the textures that this creates on the surface. An artist can use any colors they want, but for me, confidence shows through when I see brushwork done in this way; you can even see the different sizes of brushes they used. I also enjoy it when there is none present, and the surface is completely smooth; both are satisfying to me. I also enjoy performance art, the ones that incorporate the body somehow. I’ve never had the privilege of seeing one in person, but the idea of an artist becoming the artwork intrigues me.



Thistlegrown, 2025

Oil,htv transfer paper, and vinyl on linen, 36 x 24 in

And last one, if there was only one thing that people could take away from your work, what would you want that to be?


I like this confusion my work sometimes creates. I’ve heard my paintings feel like a portal or dream-like. If my work sparks a question in someone’s mind, a wonder, I feel like I’m achieving what I want from my work.


Get in touch with Rebecca: www.rebeccafruto.com

Instagram: @rebecca_fruto



Cross-pollination, 2025 Oil on canvas, 81 x 45 in


As an artist, I’m familiar with placing myself in others’ shoes and wondering who I would be if I had

gone through their

experiences.


- Rebecca Fruto


Left page: Between roots, walls, and a fractured canopy, 2025 Handcarved wood, vinyl, acrylic, pastel and ink on linen, 45.3 x 30 x 3 in


In tracing, each

line I draw reflects a specific moment in

time shaped by my current perspective, emotions, and state of mind. No traced gesture is ever

identical.





Rhapsody in blue No 47, 2025

Cyanotype on fabric sewn on paper, 25 x 22 inches


Absolutely! I am deeply fascinated by both organic and human-made structures, the perspectives found in land- scapes, cityscapes, and architecture. As I encounter these environments, I often document them through photogra- phy. When beginning a painting, one of the methods I use to activate the surface is by tracing elements from these images. This process of moving over while observing the forms in a gestural and fluid manner grounds me in the present moment. It allows the work to absorb the atmos- phere of the current time, while simultaneously embed- ding it within a larger continuum of history, accumulated time, and fading memory.


As Heraclitus wrote, we cannot step into the same river twice. Likewise, in tracing, each line I draw reflects a spe- cific moment in time shaped by my current perspective, emotions, and state of mind. No traced gesture is ever identical. In this way, the compositions become expres- sions of both immediacy and introspection, where present and past converge through the act of mark-making.


There is always a ‘before’, a prior experience or history that informs and culminates in the painting process of the

now. I find solace, hope, and a sense of continuity through this change: even as traces of the past remain elusive, they become anchors for what is yet to unfold.


Next, I’d like to speak about your series Rhapsody in Blue

— what inspired it and how did it come to life? I also won- dered if there is any piece from this series that holds a special place for you?


I began this cyanotype-on-fabric collage series in the coastal town of Bodrum, Turkey, being inspired by the radiant sun and the contemplative hues, emotions, and movements of the Aegean Sea. Though I do not hold one piece above the others in this series, each work evokes in me a distinct affinity with an unfamiliar, often intangible space.


I explore nuanced spatial relationships and shifting mem- ory forming various fractal configurations that echo both natural and built environments. I use transparency prints of places I’ve encountered that are loosely referenced in my paintings alongside locally found plants and cut-out shapes from my paint palettes to create each cyanotype. These elements are hand-sewn onto handmade paper in various colors. The impressions of place begin to dissolve, submerge, and resurface getting transformed into an un- derwater world where obscurity glistens and serendipitous connections emerge.


“This body of work feels akin to experiencing the sea through the senses: from dreamy gazing to swimming, from the pressure of

submersion to the quiet stillness of floating and listening.”


A question we always ask is about the creative process, and I’m especially interested in the early stages of con- ceiving new work. Are there any routines that help you generate ideas and get started with a new project?

- Suboart Magazine -


Yes, I routinely engage in stream-of-consciousness writ- ing, noting down feelings and observations of place in small notebooks or on my phone. I also document locations through photography by capturing viewpoints, details, and moments that resonate visually. Alongside this, I collect meaningful quotes, words, and fragments from books, po- ems, or song lyrics that strike a chord. For me, the genesis of a piece or series often begins intuitively by selecting a medium and simply initiating the process. While each work unfolds at its own pace and through its own path, beginning without fixed expectations feels liberating. It enables me to take risks and remain open to discovery.



Rhapsody in blue No 55, 2025

Cyanotype on fabric sewn on paper, 12 x 17 inches


I would imagine that creating your pieces is also a rather physical, hands-on experience. Could you put into words how creating makes you feel?


Engaging in the act of creation evokes a sense of bound- lessness, an opening of possibilities for me, wherein I of- ten lose track of time. I am particularly drawn to the tac- tile tension and physical engagement of the hands during processes such as sculpting, rug hooking, embroidering, and cutting shapes. These repetitive, embodied gestures hold a meditative quality that deeply informs my painting practice, just as painting, in turn, inspires my exploration of other mediums. I investigate how the interplay between various techniques can negotiate spatial tension, generate texture and form, and influence paint handling. There is a reciprocal relationship in which each medium brings new

sensibilities and methodologies to the other, creating a dy- namic exchange across disciplines.


Speaking about creation, is there anything you’re cur- rently working on you’d like to share with us?


I typically work across multiple disciplines and series si- multaneously. I am motivated by the ongoing, generative nature of this approach where works evolve in parallel, intersect, and cross-pollinate. Currently, I am developing my Rhapsody in Blue cyanotype collage series, expanding its scale and complexity. In tandem, I am making water- color studies that explore color, shape, rhythm, light, and shadow as experienced in my immediate environment. I am also thinking about building new armatures for my island sculptures. Upon returning to my studio in fall, I will resume oil painting, reflecting on and integrating the influences that have emerged through these concurrent processes.


I have the impression that traveling and nature are im- portant sources of inspiration for you...


That’s right, traveling and being immersed in both natu- ral and architectural environments are enduring sources of inspiration in my practice. During the summers, I reside in Bodrum, Turkey. It is a place that continues to offer an ever-deepening well of visual and sensory stimuli. From the act of swimming and gazing into the expansive blue sea to observing the heat-laden softness of the sky and the ochre-toned, succulent-dotted landscape, I am continually drawn to how light and breeze transform these elements. Each return reveals new subtleties.


This summer, I have been particularly struck by the un- predictability of the wind and its sudden transitions from powerful gusts to complete stillness. These ephemeral shifts prompt reflection on rhythm and sequencing, on the sea’s shifting currents and the swaying of bougainvillea. I am currently exploring how to capture these fleeting qual- ities through the form of leporello books.


Besides nature and Bodrum, what else have you been in- spired by or interested in lately?



Rhapsody in blue No 56, 2025

Cyanotype on fabric sewn on paper, 17.5 x 11.75 inches


I recently read Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls. His metaphor of human existence as breath, and of human actions as moving shadows, resonated deeply with my ongoing exploration of presence and absence in visual form. This is particularly evident in my evolving use of palette shapes, those physically extracted from the palette and their counterparts, the ghost/shadow shapes traced from cutouts on black paper. I am interested in the di- chotomy between permanence and impermanence in the material world, and how this tension can be extended into alternate, abstract realms through painting and its means.


Recently, I have begun cutting these shadow shapes also as hollow forms, reducing them to their silhouetted contours. I have been incorporating them into my cyanotype collag-

es, where they appear as erratic line work, existing in a parallel, yet subtly displaced, blue dimension.


And let’s wrap our conversation up with four last ques- tions. First, let’s talk about “finding your own style,” a prominent topic of conversation in the art world. What are your throughts on that?


In the back of my mind, I know the importance of this notion, but I don’t let myself get caught up by it. I believe your style and voice are something you develop over time. The more I create, the more my work aligns with who I am, becoming more authentic and honest. I continue to evolve, focusing on refining my technique, all through my own vision.


Next, what have you learned in your life as an artist so far that you’d like to pass on to your peers? Any advice you’d like to share?


Be open to whatever comes your way, keep creating at your own pace, and take the time to really get to know yourself through the process.


If there was only one thing that people could remember from your work, what would you want that to be?


I want my work to stir the heart by challenging and deep- ening the viewer’s sense of what they desire to perceive.


And, finally, please complete the following sentence:

I believe that art has the power to…


“I believe that art has the power to challenge the mind and heart, broaden perspectives, shift the

status quo, cultivating love, beauty and compassion.”


Get in touch with Yasemin: www.yaseminkackar.com Instagram: @yaseminkackardemirel



Up: Dawns, 2024, oil on oil paper, 16 x 12 inches (left) / Day into night sail, 2025, oil on oil paper, 12 x 9 inches (right)

Down: Deeper columns, 2023, gouache, ink, watercolor, colored pencil, pen on paper, 25.5 x 20 inches (left)

Ode to unmoored love, 2023, gouache, watercolor, color pencil, artist pen, acrylic marker, ink on paper, 30 x 22 inches (right)


Rhapsody in blue No 50, 2025

Cyanotype on fabric sewn on paper, 22.75 x 17 inches


Rhapsody in blue No 48, 2025

Cyanotype on fabric sewn on paper, 27.5 x 20 inches

Xiuzhuo Zhou


Absence


This series explores absence as a metaphor for existence. Through quiet images of empty benches, grounded boats, and waiting bicycles, it reflects on memory, imperma- nence, and how absence, as presence in another form, holds space for loss, hope, and reunion.




Get in touch with Xiuzhuo on Instagram: @xiuzhuo_z

About Xiuzhuo


Xiuzhuo Zhou is a photographer from Hubei, China, now based in Southampton, UK. His work explores emotion, memory, and identity through a realistic style that cap- tures the quiet poetry of everyday life. Combining pho- tography, installation, and new media, he uses collage and AI-generated imagery to blur the line between reality and imagination. Centering on themes of temporality and ex- istential reflection, Zhou documents subtle moments of introspection and beauty, inviting viewers to re-examine their inner worlds and find meaning in the ordinary.




All works: Absence, 2023 Photography, 22 x 12.4 cm




All works: Absence, 2023 Photography, 22 x 12.4 cm

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Clothilde Lasserre


About the artist


Clothilde Lasserre is a French painter and sculptor whose artistic path is rooted in a humanistic and socially engaged approach. Raised in an inspiring family environment, she has always nurtured a deep creative freedom and a strong sense of conviction. For over twenty years, she has de- veloped her practice in her own studios, officially recog- nized by the Ateliers d’Art de France label. From her van- tage point above Paris’s La Défense, she draws inspiration from the ebb and flow of crowds, the fleeting encounters, the movement of lives. Her works — both paintings and sculptures — explore the need to cultivate our singularity while learning to live together. Represented by galleries in France, her work is included in private collections in New York, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France. Her career includes solo exhibitions, contemporary art fairs, and juried shows, and has been recognized with multiple distinctions.

The Silent Choreography of Urban Life


Clothilde Lasserre creates work that explores movement, human connection, and the place of the body within the social landscape. Inspired by the flow of crowds and the silent choreography of urban life, she develops a visual language of rhythm, momentum, and pause. Her paint- ings and sculptures engage in a constant dialogue, seeking balance between strength and fragility, density and emp- tiness. Her compositions, often inhabited by figures seen from above or forms in tension, reflect a sensitive reading of human interaction—where every individual contributes to a larger whole. Her gestures are intuitive yet deliberate, aiming to capture the essence of connection: what binds us together, and what remains elusive. Across her series, Lasserre builds a universe that is both personal and collec- tive, driven by the conviction that we must hold space for the other and embrace the richness of singularity.



Territoires suspendus, 2025, Porcelain, 45 x 45 x 35 cm Ilots de vie, 2025, Porcelain, 35 x 35 x 35 cm


Get in touch with Clothilde: www.clothildelasserre.com Instagram: @clothilde_lasserre_artist



Up: Vie animée horizon serein, 2025, Oil on Canvas, 120 x 120 cm

Down: Soubresauts, 2025, Oil on Canvas, 110 x 110 cm (left) / Bulles de Vie, 2025, Oil on Canvas, 110 x 110 cm (right)

Rebecca Wickham


Once Was


How do we mourn for more-than-human loss, when all that remains is empty space? Once Was explores the hollow land left behind when glaciers melt, and the grief and guilt that coalesces in the bare earth revealed by their erasure. Images recording sites of recent glacier loss sit alongside a series of death masks, made with rock, earth and melt- water collected from each site, and cast from a mould of the artist’s own face. A memorial photograph pre-pho- tography, the death mask acts as an object of grief and remembrance, the haunting of a presence no longer there. Here, it ties our fate together with that of our glaciers – the Earth’s skin is our skin too. These images speak to our en- tanglement with, and responsibility for, these sites of loss, an elegy and prophecy both.



Tiefen Glacier, 2024

Lithographic Prints, 43 x 46 cm



Calderone Glacier, 2024

Lithographic Prints, 43 x 46 cm


About Rebecca


An Australian early-career photographer, Rebecca has re- cently graduated from London College of Communication with an MA (Distinction) in Photojournalism and Docu- mentary Photography. Her research-based practice sits between photography and other mediums, with work con- cerning the climate crisis and our relationship with the earth. Primarily focused on landscape, she is interested in the materiality of place, often working directly with the environment to bring a record of its history and physicality into the work.


Get in touch with Rebecca: rwickham.com

Instagram: @bectic



Calderone Glacier, Death Mask, 2024 Digital Photographs

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Arwen Duggan


Napoli and Monte di Procida


This body of work consists of black and white analog film photographs taken during a 2024 trip to Napoli and Monte di Procida. It forms part of my ongoing practice, which is grounded in documentation and archiving, a process I return to often in my work. Street photography plays a central role in my approach, and during my time in Italy, it felt like a natural fit with the beauty of the Italian land- scape and people. This project continues from my street photography in Limerick City. Street photography is im- portant to me because it preserves moments in a world that often looks away, drawing attention to what is often missed or overlooked.

About Arwen


Arwen Duggan (b.2003) is an Irish visual artist from Tip- perary, currently based in Limerick. She is a recent grad- uate from Fine Art Painting at Limerick School of Art & Design in 2025. Her practice spans painting, video, pho- tography, and installation, exploring themes of identity, surveillance, and the intersection of technology and per- ception. Duggan has exhibited in several exhibitions, most recently, Concordia, 2025, and Limerick Showcase, 2024. Duggan will begin her MFA in Fine Art at Limerick School of Art & Design in 2025.

Get in touch with Arwen on Instagram: @arwendugganartist



Sposini, 2024

Black and White Film, 21 x 29,7 cm

Paffuto, 2024

Black and White Film, 21 x 29,7 cm



Up: Monte, 2024, Black and White Film, 21 x 29,7 cm Down: Ragazzi, 2024, Black and White Film, 21 x 29,7 cm

Annamária Rita Tóth


Searching for Connection


In her work, Annamária Rita Tóth examines timelessness and constant change, searching for connections with time, space, nature, people. Her paintings balance on the border of abstraction and figurality. She is interested in both ma- terial presence and intangible feelings and attachments. In most cases she works with oil on canvas, but she also creates drawings and uses other materials, like glassfabric and ceramics.



Biophilia I., 2024

Oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm (Photo by Márián Gábor)



Connections IV, 2021 Oil on canvas, 140 x 120 cm


About Annamária


Annamária Rita Tóth graduated from the Hungarian Uni- versity of Fine Arts as a Painter in 2018, and received her Artist Teacher degree in 2020. In 2017, she was awarded the National Higher Education Scholarship, followed by the Barcsay Award in 2018. She is a member of the Society of Hungarian Painters, the National Association of Hungarian Artists (MAOE). She is the co-founder of the FŰZ art group, founded in Budapest, 2021. She has participated in numer- ous domestic and international exhibitions.


Get in touch with Annamária: https://tothannamariarita.com Instagram: @toth.annamaria.rita


Layers of mine II, 2021

Oil on glassfabric, 130 x 100 cm


I can provide clues, use codes, but the

artwork exists on its own and offers itself as an experience of contemplation, not

representation or understanding.

- MK Lavigne



Glitch, 2025

Latex on canvas, 61 x 61 cm

On Colors,

Luminescence and Landscape Painting


MK

Lavigne

with



Self-portrait by MK Lavigne in her studio in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada


Hi Marie-Kim, it’s a pleasure to have you. We like to start our interviews with a little time travel—do you remember the first time you created something?


When I was little, we lived in an ancestral “piece-sur- piece” house. I was always drawing the architecture of this blue house, built from an old barn, with very unique struc- tures. The typical dormer windows, the exposed beams, the chimney, the curved double-pitched roof. My father was an art teacher, and there were always art supplies at home. Also, from the age of 4, I had pottery classes and I remem- ber making many clay pieces.


Later on, you studied Visual Arts, and I read that for some years, photography was the main focus of your practice. Nowadays, you dedicate yourself to painting, creating vibrant abstract works with UV sensitive paint. Can you please tell me more about your work and also about the Hard Edge technique that you use frequently?

I have always been passionate about photography, but also about painting. I practiced both mediums during my art studies. At the end of my master’s degree in visual arts (in 2008), I chose to focus solely on photography, out of laziness, I think. A little before turning 40, on a whim, I decided to start painting again. I cleared out half of my basement to set up my studio. It’s been 7 years now that I’ve been spending almost all my time painting. A true ob- session drives me; Art demands a lot of rigor, time, and work. In the studio, time doesn’t exist, and it’s the best refuge. The hard-edge technique has always attracted me, and over the years, I have decided to push it further by working with curved, repeated lines and gradients. To start a painting, I like to divide my surface into sections with which I build my composition. I plan very little for the next steps, advancing instinctively with each added layer. At a certain point in the painting, I reflect on strategies of connection, recall, and/or fusion. Harmony often occurs (or not) at this stage.

“I admit to producing a lot and keeping only a small body of work.

I do many trials and experiments because I strive for perfection.”


In my humble opinion, a good hard-edge painting should have no imperfections; whether in the sharpness of the lines, the application of varnishes, the execution of gradi- ents, etc. It’s not to showcase technical prowess, but rather to allow for vibrant, hypnotic, dynamic effects, free from visual distractions.


Some of your paintings remind me of landscapes, the lines on the canvas seem to draw mountain-like contours. I wonder if they are conscious abstractions of landscapes or if these shapes enter your practice subconsciously?


The truth is that all my paintings are driven by my passion for mountains and, in my eyes, all my paintings are land- scapes. I have a horizon line, depth of field, mountains, skies, and sometimes I add an ocean or a body of water. I cannot control the viewer’s gaze; I can provide clues, use codes, but the artwork exists on its own and offers itself as an experience of contemplation, not representation or understanding. That said, I like to think of myself as a landscape painter!


Next, I’d like to know more about the vibrant colours in your work—can you tell me more about your fascination with neon colours and UV sensitive paint?


I really enjoy creating gradients with pastel colors. I am a big fan of subtle transitions within the same surface; from lilac to pink, from white to sky blue, from lime green to light yellow, etc. I love the color that results from the fu- sion of the two colors. Essentially, the UV fluorescent lines were added as small interventions to accentuate the con- tours of my gradients. Gradually, I created full gradients by integrating a UV agent into my latex mixtures. I was quickly captivated by the fact that a painting now had two versions: one under normal lighting and another under ul- traviolet lighting.

That brings me to my next question, the creative pro- cess. You already shared some of it but I’d like to dig a bit deeper—how do you usually get from an idea for a piece to bringing it to life?


I always work on several paintings at the same time. My main driving force lies in color. I create a series of colors, almost always pastels, without thinking too much but always with a main color, depending on my mood at the moment. Sometimes, I jot down 2-3 lines on a piece of paper to start a composition, but decisions are constantly made in the present. I only paint if I am joyful. I am un- able to work if my mental health is affected by a difficult situation. That being said, if a painting is going well and makes my heart race, it is certainly capable of influencing my mood.


There is a piece I’m curious to hear more about, it’s “Air- plane.” I love the colour palette of blues and purples and the dreamy feel the piece emenates...


Airplane is a fabulous landscape with great depth of field. There are several dimensions in the composition of this painting that give the impression of being in the clouds. It’s a painting that was made with confidence and light-hearted joy. Not all paintings can be successful.


“Accepting to abandon a painting is part of the practice; even if a ridiculous number

of hours and materials have been spent.”


The high of a successful artwork is great, but the down also exists in abandonment. I try to remain stoic both in success and in failure, and it’s not easy. With Airplane, I followed instinctive decisions and good moves without ever stopping, and the high was immense.


Is there any other piece you’d like to speak about more in detail?

EMANATION. One of my favorite works. The painting was finished, but I had a vision. I decided to take a risk; if I failed my process, I would lose the painting. I added the two small light green lines above the two mountains at the top, and I succeeded. This small intervention sudden- ly illuminated the painting...I loved creating this painting from start to finish—I didn’t want to finish it; I wanted to stay in that emotion for a long time.


We’re reaching the end of our conversation, so I have three last questions for you. To start with, let’s look be- hind the scenes for a moment—who are some of your artistic references, artists whose work you admire? And besides art, what else inspires you?


James Turrell, Maude Corriveau, Josiane Lanthier, Denis Villeneuve, Katia Konioukhova, Jordan Tran, Dan Brault, Xavier Dolan, Jason Cantoro, Karine Locatelli, Cynthia Di- nan-Mitchell, Peter Zumthor. Besides art, I am passionate about mountain hiking, specifically in Switzerland. I try to plan all my trips based on the mountains I want to explore.

I also enjoy architectural and interior design. I am par- ticularly interested in architects who skillfully integrate natural light into their structures, creating lines of light, shapes, and shadows that shift across interior surfaces throughout the seasons.


Is there any special project you’re dreaming about realiz- ing in the future?


I dream of having an exhibition in a gallery where, during the opening, the lighting on my works could alternate be- tween white light and ultraviolet light. I would also love, one day, to see my works in beautiful architect-designed homes.


And last question, if you had to describe your work in one word only, what would that be?


LUMINESCENCE. I really like this question. I find that Lu- minescence is the perfect meeting of Light and Reminis- cence, two words that I am fond of.



Airplane (UV), 2024

Latex on canvas, 76 x 76 cm

Emanation (MINI-UV), 2025 Latex on canvas, 35 x 35 cm


Get in touch with MK: www.mkfluo.com Instagram: @mkfluo


Emanation, 2025

Latex on canvas, 76 x 76 cm



Pink Valley, 2025

Latex on canvas, 61 x 61 cm



Emanation (Mini), 2025 Latex on wood, 35 x 35 cm

Michael Ivan Schwartz


About Michael


Michael Ivan Schwartz combines portrait and documentary photography with an approach that is inquisitive and ar- tistic. He thrives on learning from others and uncovering their hidden beauty. This behind-the-scenes method cap- tures the true vibe and spirit of his subjects. Michael has a passion for capturing people’s stories in a way that is authentic, compelling, and deeply resonant. His keen eye for beauty, combined with his decades of experience, make him a true master of his craft as he unlocks the untold stories that lie within.


TATT2U


The series TATT2U is a visual exploration of the connection between body art and personal identity. Tattoos, serve as testimonies of experiences, memories, beliefs, and trans- formations. In this series, I invite viewers into the inti- mate worlds of individuals who carry their stories, hopes, and struggles on their skin, framing their tattoos within spaces that reflect the broader narrative of their lives. Each photograph captures a subject not just posing with their tattoo, but engaging with the environment that has shaped them. The backdrop serves as an extension of their per- sonal history. The series seeks to amplify the complexity of the human experience, highlighting how tattoos are not isolated markings but intricate parts of a larger, ongoing story. Through these portraits, I aim to shift the narra- tive surrounding tattoos—often viewed as mere decoration or rebellion—toward an understanding of them as potent symbols of identity, culture, and personal transformation.


Get in touch with Michael: www.loud-communications.com Instagram: @michaelivanschwartz

Next page: Dance Dance, 2024, 4398 x 6597 px


Up: Escape The Monotony, 2024, 6038 x 4025 px Center: Overhead, 2024, 5782 x 4626 px

Down: Stay Scrappy, 2025, 4536 x 3024 px


All works: Digital Photography

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Gabriel Campoy


About Gabriel


Gabriel was born in Baja California, Mexico, and raised in Lawrenceville, Georgia. His interest in the arts began at an early age, drawing characters for his classmates. Even in elementary school, he won the T-shirt design compe- tition for the school’s Field Day. As he grew up, he took weekend painting classes to further develop his skills.


In high school, Gabriel attended the Suwanee Arts Asso- ciation and competed in a statewide art competition, re- ceiving a callback during his junior year from Valdosta State University. His creative journey continued when he was accepted into the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he studied color theory, life drawing, painting, and took electives such as fashion illustration. Gabriel gradu- ated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design.


While building a career in New York’s fashion industry, Gabriel maintained his passion for painting. His color work and fashion designs have been featured in brands such as Vera Wang, Marchesa, Reem Acra, Michael Kors, Rhone, and Sergio Tacchini. Gabriel also worked as a free- lancer for accomplished activist and artist, Zoe Buckman for almost two years. In 2019, he held his first solo exhibi- tion in Williamsburg. After a setback due to the pandemic, he showed his second solo three day art show “A/way With Words this summer in the East Village.

Connecting to Each Other through Art


This body of work is an accumulation of pieces I’ve created over the past year and a half. The central metaphor l’ve explored is that painting, much like language, is a form of communication. Through my experimentation with differ- ent mediums and techniques, l’ve come to understand that each medium functions similarly to words-each brush- stroke, color choice, and texture has its own meaning and intention.


One moment, you might be speaking softly with smooth acrylic paint, creating a subtle flow of expression. In the next, you could be shouting with bold, expressive brush- strokes, striking the canvas like an intimate thought you might keep locked away in a diary. But then, there are also paintings that feel more like a conversation, where the language is clear, open, and meant to be shared with the world. Just as with words, the way we use our artistic lan- guage shapes how we communicate our deepest emotions, thoughts, and stories.


Art, like language, is a universal medium through which we connect with one another.


Get in touch with Gabriel: www.gabrielcampoy.com

Instagram: @gabrielcampoy


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Angel Grapes, 2025

Acrylic on Cnavas, 40 by 30 inches


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Miss Sunday


About Miss Sunday


Miss Sunday is a 28-year-old queer South African art- ist whose work embodies joy, community, and radical self-acceptance through painting, sculpture, and illustra- tion. Winner of the Superbalist New Artist Search in 2019 and semi-finalist for the Yogi Sip Artist Collaboration in 2020, she has established herself as both a creative prob- lem solver and a visual storyteller dedicated to uplifting her community.


Her practice has been shaped by a series of collaborations with organisations such as the International Planned Par- enthood Federation, TedX, and Congenerate, where she has created open-licensed artworks addressing subjects ranging from climate change to sexual health awareness. These partnerships, developed over the past five years, have significantly influenced her commissioned projects and expanded her artistic vocabulary. In addition to her professional work, she has exhibited in both group and solo contexts at galleries including The Fourth, as well as on an ongoing basis at Cape Town’s Kaya Café. There, she not only presents her art but also facilitates creative workshops centred on themes of body positivity and self- love, nurturing a sense of belonging within her community. As a part-time artist still early in her career, Miss Sunday demonstrates a strong and compelling voice, with a mes- sage that carries both promise and resonance.

Inspiring Joy & Mutual Understanding


Miss Sunday’s art is, at its core, an exploration of joy. Through dopamine-rich palettes, soothing linework, and geometric-inspired structures, she captures the fleeting es- sence of joy and transforms it into something enduring. Having experienced her own struggles with mental health, her painting process becomes an act of gentle resistance

- each canvas a reminder that joy remains present, wait- ing to be rediscovered. Her work suggests that even amidst difficulty, beauty and brightness are never too far away, if only we pause to notice them.


Yet joy is not her only subject. Her art also cultivates di- alogue around community, body acceptance, and queer representation - recurring themes that surface throughout her pieces. When asked why she chooses not to depict fac- es, she explains:


“I don’t want to prescribe how a viewer should feel. I want them to bring themselves to the work - to see their own reflection, to step into the future of joy before them. That is what they deserve.”


Get in touch with Miss Sunday on Instagram: @misssunday_art


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Stay, 2023, Acrylic and Paint Marker on Canvas, 15 x 21 cm

Left page: Church, 2020, Acrylic and Paint Marker on Canvas, 122 x 46 cm


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James Frew


About the artist


Dr James Frew is an artist, teacher, writer, and academ- ic. He currently teaches on the Art and Design Foundation course with OnCampus Southampton, in association with Winchester School of Art. As an educator he lectures widely on art and culture, whilst also possessing a keen interest in pedagogy and its evolving manifestations within prac- tice-based learning, specifically, the interplay between theory and praxis. Frew completed his practice-based PhD in painting at The Glasgow School of Art in 2021 and is an active researcher – he has published original writing featured in The Journal of Contemporary Painting (2023) and the book PhotographyDigitalPainting (2020). In 2016 he was awarded the John Mather Rising Star Scholarship for his research into expanded field painting, and in 2017 The Glasgow School of Art’s Chairman’s Medal.

Internet Culture & Post-Digital Art


James Frew’s practice explores expanded painting and post-digital art production in the age of the Internet and social media. Specifically, how paint(ing), images, and language translate via traditional mediums and new me- dia, through the process of using digital technologies. Thematically, his work nods to contemporary Internet cul- ture and imagery, frequently employing irony, profanity, and transgressive humour. Formally his work attempts to reassess and rejuvenate the histories and languages of painting, expanding its territories by using analogue and digital technologies to blend ‘medium’ (discrete, analogue objects) and ‘media’ (networked, digital information). His recent work explores post-digital art practices through the creation of what he calls ‘digipaintages’ – hybrids of digi- tal paintings and photomontages manifest as both digitally circulated images and physical textile printed paintings.


Get in touch with James: www.jamesfrewfineart.com Instagram: @James_frew



Everything? Oh, Everything., 2025 Digital textile print, 55 x 55 cm

Someone I Can Comfortably Be Ugly With, 2025 Digital textile print, 55 x 55 cm


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Up: The Poet vs. the Computer, 2025

Down: Have a Great Time (Karma is a Brick), 2025 (left) / It’s (Not) Too Late to Begin Again, 2025 (right) All works: Digital textile print, 55 x 55cm

- Suboart Magazine -


Louise McGunnigle


About Me and My Work


My work explores themes of the spectral and the unknown, often drawing from ghost stories, folklore, and supersti- tion. I use painting as a way to navigate the space between abstraction and figuration—allowing forms to emerge in- tuitively through mark making, suggesting apparitions that aren’t always visible at first glance. Since 2022, I’ve exhibited in a number of group shows across Glasgow, in- cluding “Flesh Girls” at The Old Hairdressers, “Embedded Bodies” at Barnes Garage, and “Ectos Chronos” at New Glasgow Society.



Responses to the Ephemeral


My work is driven by an ongoing fascination with the un- known—spectral spaces we sense but cannot fully grasp. I use painting to explore our collective curiosity around ghosts, superstitions, and the haunting presence of what remains unseen. Each piece is a response to the ephemeral, where figuration emerges slowly and intuitively through layers of abstract mark making.


I’m particularly interested in how figures can material- ise not only within a single canvas but also across a body of work, creating what I think of as a spiritual dynamic between them. These apparitions are deliberately ambigu- ous—at times they recede into the surface, at others they confront the viewer more directly. Colour and titling are also central to my practice, guiding the viewer through a narrative that echoes ghost stories while remaining open to interpretation. Ultimately, my paintings ask what it means to be haunted—not just by spirits, but by memory, myth, and the stories we pass between generations.

My work is held in private collections in Scotland, Finland, and Japan, and I’m represented by Art Pistol Gallery in Glasgow. A Glasgow native, I continue to live and work in the city, where my practice is rooted in an evolving interest in the spiritual, the narrative, and the unseen. In 2024, I graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in Painting & Printmaking.



Get in touch with Louise: www.louisemcgunnigle.com Instagram:@louise.mcgunnigle



Up: Ghost Woman, 2024, Acrylic, 70 x 100 cm

Down: Tangina Seance, 2024, Acrylic, 130 x 160 cm (left) / The Fifth Horseman, 2024, Acrylic, 130 x 160 cm (right)

Left page: They’re Here, 2024, Acrylic, 130 x 160 cm (left) / None Remain But a Few Ghosts, 2025, Acrylic, 75 x 100 cm (right)

- Suboart Magazine -


Gina Restivo


Black & White Cutouts in a Technicolor World


My work is shaped by movement through unfamiliar en- vironments and encounters with different cultures. These experiences help me notice patterns in how people relate to themselves, each other, and the world.


Black and White Cutouts in a Technicolor World is a mixed media series that reflects on the universal nature of human experience—beyond borders, identities, and timezones. Though the photographs originate from specific locations, the settings are intentionally vague, creating a tension be- tween presence and absence.


I hand-tear drawn figures from paper and integrate them into each scene to explore the space between what is shown and what is suggested. Rather than fixed narratives, the pieces offer open-ended moments that invite viewers to im- agine who the figures are, where they are, and what they might be feeling, and reflect on the often ambiguous ter- rain of being human.



Black and White Cutouts in a Technicolor World, 2024 Acrylic and paper on photo print, 8.5 x 11 in (both works)



About Me


I’m Gina Restivo, a multidisciplinary artist working in digital art, photography, painting, and drawing. Originally from San Francisco and now based in Massachusetts, my work is driven by a deep curiosity about the world and my place in it. At the tender age of 24 I’ve traveled to 24 coun- tries. These experiences have shaped not only how I see the world, but how I express it through art. I’m inspired by the connections I make with people and places, the feeling of being both a part of and apart from something larger, and the moments of self-discovery that travel and art consist- ently bring.


My work explores themes like isolation, imagination, identity, femininity, humanity, and the intercultural spac- es where these ideas intersect. I’ve had an artist’s eye for as long as I can remember. My first instinct to create start- ed at age two with a marker and an “off-limits” surface (much to my parents’ dismay). Through every medium I use, I try to tell stories, ask questions, and blur the line between reality and the imagined.


Get in touch with Gina on Instagram: @eyesall0ver

- Suboart Magazine -



Black and White Cutouts in a Technicolor World, 2024 Acrylic and paper on photo print, 8.5 x 11 in


Pastel is very

intuitive for me.


It had a gateway

impact to going large scale with my work

in a way that painting never did. At the heart of it, I’m a drawer.

- Gabor Bata


Death in Park, 2025

Oil Stick, Oil Pastel On Canvas, 36 x 48 inches (Photo by William Sabourin)

Something Goofy, Something Scar y and Something

a Little Sad


Gabor

Bata

Gabor Bata photographed by Béatrice Dubreuil

with


Hello Gabor, it’s a pleasure to have you. Let’s start with a few basics for people who are not familiar with you and your work. Who are you and what do you do?


Hi! My name is Gabor Bata. I’m a Canadian artist and I draw from the visual languages of film, comics and de- sign to create images of cartoonish figures who’d rather rip your arm off than admit they love you. They could probably use a hug.


Let’s go back in time for a moment—what were your be- ginnings in the arts?


I was always drawing, but I specifically started out drawing and writing comics with my brother. We used to sell them on the playground at school. Then I got into movies with him when I was a preteen and we would write and direct horror films with our friends and edit them on iMovie. We

had the cops called on us a couple times for getting fake blood all over the street. Somewhere on the internet, there is a YouTube channel with all of our videos that is very haunted and very annoying in a 13 year-old-boy kind of way.


And how did the decision to pursue art professionally come about?


To tell you the truth, it wasn’t like being part of the gal- lery world was a lifelong passion of mine. I was pretty convinced I was going to be in film or cartooning. I still love those mediums, but there came a point when I went to art school, and I began to enjoy a creative flexibility I hadn’t felt before. I was lucky to have had several mentors and artist friends believe in my work enough to guide me and challenge me along the way, and I guess the gallery thing just sort of stuck.

Your practice explores social alienation and how it trans- forms us, portraying figures who have lost their humani- ty and have devolved into cartoons. Can you please tell me more about your work and why it is important to you to open conversations about loneliness?


Important isn’t the word I’d use. I just think loneliness is a part of life, and it’s something I feel and a lot of folks I know feel to various extents. I’m just illustrating the ex- treme, most ridiculous end of that, and asking what hap- pens when that need for connection isn’t met. How does desperation change a person? What happens when one can’t connect or communicate any longer? You see that in some of my drawings: the characters just auto-cannibalize and become abstracted. They merge violently with others. The speech bubbles and the dialogue is abstracted as much as the characters can be. It’s all serious and morbid…but then, I think it’s funnier and more real if the people expe- riencing these things are a bit ridiculous looking along the way. You can look at the different ways people manoeuvred Covid, and how quick we are to forget it all, to get an idea of that...


Speaking about Covid, would you say that the pandemic

influenced your work to some extent?


I don’t want to say Covid influenced my work, but I will say I began zeroing in on alienation in my drawings more di- rectly in the second year of my MFA, around 2021 to 2022. It was never a conscious thought to even reference that, but I suppose the big, invasive faces and the wide-open mouths I draw as points of horror and anxiety are sort of unmistakable. The desire to connect and, simultaneously, the fear of it.


As you already mentioned at the beginning of our con- versation, you have a great love for film, animation and comics. I’d love to hear more about that and about how they have influenced your practice.


I just consumed so much of that growing up. It was like a salve for me, even the stuff I probably shouldn’t have been reading and watching. Reading Mad Magazine, Life in Hell and Fritz the Cat, watching Godzilla, Evil Dead, The

Exorcist. I had this memory from when I was about 6 years old, watching this bit on TV where this hairy, muddy crea- ture attacked a man in a back alley. For the longest time, I thought it was a dream, but it was only when I was a teenager that I discovered it was David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, the scene behind the Winkies. My parents had rented it, and I walked in on that early moment in the film. When you see shit like that at that age, you don’t forget it.


Comics and film are different mediums, but they both play with sequencing, motion, and narrative. I liked telling sto- ries, and I think that’s not gone away, even if it’s a dif- ferent medium. Peter Doig talked about how he views his paintings as though they were movies, and the viewer their director. I like looking at it that way too, with the music and sounds and everything!


You mostly draw with oil pastels that you apply in thick layers, creating these heavy textures so characteristic of your work. Can you tell me more about your use of oil pastels and how working with them makes you feel?


Pastel is very intuitive for me. It had a gateway impact to going large scale with my work in a way that painting nev- er did. At the heart of it, I’m a drawer. While some people have described what I do as painting (which makes sense given the emphasis on form and colour), someone recently said to me that I approach painting from a drawer’s hand, and I thought that was really apt.



The Field, 2024

Oil Pastel on Gessoed Paper 57 x 40 inches (Photo by William Sabourin)

“Pastel is both a blessing and a fucking curse, because

it’s an utter mess.”


It never dries, and with the way I really like to use it, which is to build it up and build it up, any hope of it not smearing on everything and everyone it makes contact with is futile. I can’t believe I haven’t been laughed out of this business yet.


But again, I love that build up. I love the messiness. It’s like radioactive. In a way, it’s of a piece with my subject matter. I like it looking cruddy and goopy. It’s both ugly and attractive. It’s my lizard brain, seeing the light and colour reflect off the surface of a tar pit. It’s like a trap, and for me, it works.


That sounds all like a very bodily, hands-on activity. Could you put into words how creating your drawings makes you feel?


Both energized and frustrated. As much as I’m streamlin- ing my process the further along I’m going, intuition is a part of the process I never completely shed. I do plan out certain elements, like the basic composition, but there’s a lot I end up leaving to chance. The colours and textures I like to discover as I go, and that can be really exciting and moving. It’s just such a dynamic material and process. If I know too much in advance how everything will shake out, I get a little bored. Maybe I just live comfortably with in- stability, so the moments of anxiety and doubt settle nicely with the happy surprise that whatever I’ve been making doesn’t end up looking like a dog’s breakfast. But that’s usually the trouble with it: there’s way more of a chance of investing a lot into something that’ll suck. But I guess that’s showbiz, baby!


I read that drawing in your sketchbook is also a very im- portant part of your practice and creative process...


That’s right, I’ve usually got my head buried pretty deep in my sketchbook. In fact, a lot of my big drawings begin as

digital collages ripped from scans of my sketchbooks. I’m a pretty avid doodler, and I’m probably drawing at least 10 pages a day. It’s been like that for as long as I’ve been drawing, so that’s the part of the process that comes the most naturally to me.


And, while working on a piece, would you say you are usually trying to convey a certain emotion or message?


Something a little goofy, something a little scary, some- thing a little sad. If I hit all those, I’m pretty happy.


Next question, is there any piece you’d like to speak about more in detail?


A couple of years ago, I wrote this script for a play called The Chase. It’s written pretty informally, partially in prose, partially in screenplay. I illustrated it, and my partner, Béatrice Dubreuil (@    breuil on instagram), designed it. I feel this thing has come the absolute closest to capturing the themes and the specific tone and kinds of characters and scenarios my art aims to present.



The Chase, 2023

Risograph on Paper, 4 × 9.5 inches

- Suboart Magazine -


It’s about Elmer Fudd and Sylvester the Cat from Loon- ey Tunes, being in this insane, volatile romance. They’re chasing each other around a dining room table, trying to rip each other to pieces. It’s like Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together meets Looney Tunes meets Funny Games. It’s very stupid and embarrassing. When I began writing this project, I had all the intention in the world to make some- thing serious that I could be proud of. My mind, however, kept going to the dumbest possible idea I could think of. I would spend hours trying to brainstorm this other, more respectable concept, and all the while I’d quickly jot down a scene where Elmer Fudd is screaming and banging on the walls because his cat-puppet husband proposed pol- yamory.


That was the tone I struck and fell in love with: This deeply intimate story about a desperate, crumbling relationship

— something we’ve all been in or have been witness to — but having these two insane, embarrassing failures be the focus of it. In the old cartoons, they speak with these lisps and speech impediments, so I’d written it phonetically to read as garbled and as incomprehensible as they would ac- tually sound. It’s stupid, and funny and sad and also kind of disturbing. I’ve gotten a LOT of different reactions to- wards it. I think, if you ever want to understand my work better, you should read The Chase.


Our interview is coming to an end, so let’s wrap up with a few last questions. First, what have you been working on or thinking about recently?


I’ve been thinking a lot about context and about flesh- ing out more of the world that my images inhabit. I had a critique at this residency in New York back in May with ARTCH and the NYC Crit Club, and the biggest takeaway was the question of “WHERE do my characters feel the most alienation.” It was such an obvious, basic question, but one I hadn’t given too much consideration.


I’ve mostly steered clear of fleshing out a “universe” (I hate that word, but yeah) or an avatar representing me the way Trenton Doyle Hancock or Ebecho Muslimova have in their paintings. But lately I’m interested in moving to- wards that and bringing more specificity to my drawings.

I could easily see it becoming too general and decorative otherwise. I saw this Salman Toor show during that same residency, and that was really eye-opening in terms of storytelling in a composition. Every character was doing something, interacting with someone, living their own lit- tle story. It was great.


Second, what have you been inspired by lately?


I’ve been slowly digging through this Frank Auerbach book by by Robert Hughes, and that’s already been pretty in- spiring and validating to read as an artist. Sometimes you just need to hear how the other artists before you kept chugging along to understand why the hell you’re still do- ing any of this and to feel a little less alone in the process. Speaking of, check out these fine folks here: Béatrice Dubreuil (@    breuil), Parker Davis (@parker_dav), Al- legra Harvard (@allegra.harvard), Laurel Rennie (@lau- relhrennie), Darcy Roop (@darcyroop), Avery Suzuki (@ suzukiavery). I don’t personally know Shelley Uckotter (@ shelleyuckotter), Lotus L. Kang (@lotuslkang) or Julia Ye- rger (@julia_yerger), but they’re new favourites of mine. I’m also inspired constantly by the works of RB Kitaj, Betty Goodwin, Chris Harnan (@chrishchris), Joe Kessler (@joe- baskervillekessler), Gary Panter, and Mike Kelley.


And last one, what are your hopes for the future?


I’m looking at a giant smog-red sun outside my window, so maybe less of that would be great, please.



This Time Will Be Different, 2023 (Photo by Alberto Porro) Oil Pastel on Canvas, 33.25 x 47.25 inches


Get in touch with Gabor: Gabor Bata Instagram: @batabing_bataboom



Smoker Walking Dog, 2024 Oil Pastel on Paper, 16 x 20 inches

(Photo by William Sabourin)


These works

treat space not as a neutral backdrop but as an active

body that carries social, cultural, and political

implications.


- Lin Chang-Rong


Right page: Spatial Reality– Before Vanishing, 2025, Land art

Lin Chang-Rong


On Spatial Reality

And Space as an Active Body


Lin Chang-Rong photographed by Jheng, Yuan-Dong


Hello Lin, thanks for taking your time to answer our questions. To start with, could you please introduce your- self and your work?


I am from Taiwan and work as a scholar, curator, artist, and designer, focusing on the complex relationships be- tween contemporary society and the environment. I am currently a professor in the Department of Art Industry at National Taitung University, where I also served as depart- ment chair for six years.


My artistic practice spans a wide range of media, with a particular focus on site-specific installations that en- gage deeply with the natural environment. I am interest- ed in how materiality, symbols, and space intertwine to construct multilayered narratives of power, identity, and memory. Combining academic research with artistic ex- perimentation, I aim to reveal the subtle interactions be-

tween humanity and nature, while critically reflecting on how capitalism and the information age shape individual identity and social structures.Many of my works convey the concept of “space as a body,” using minimal materials and symbolic gestures to construct poetic sensory realms that embody both the fragility and timelessness of space. These works invite viewers to reconsider their relationship with the environment and to sense the interwoven connec- tions between nature and imagination, as well as between reality and fiction.


Before speaking further about your work, let’s quickly go back in time for a moment. Do you remember the first time you got in touch with visual art?


My first encounter with visual art began right at the door- step of my childhood home, which was surrounded by the rural landscapes of my hometown. Growing up in such a

natural environment, I often found myself observing the subtle changes in the seasons and the land. I would shape small three-dimensional forms out of the sandy soil in front of the house, or stack stones in the flowing streams nearby. In many ways, nature was my very first studio and playground for creation.


At the beginning of our conversation you spoke about your interest in exploring themes of power, identity and memory, and I read that your work is deeply influenced by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Can you please tell us more about your work and his influence on it?


That’s right, I am deeply influenced by the ideas of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He observed that as we fol- low global currents and become embedded in the world system, commodities and symbols function as instruments of power, reflecting the mechanisms of the market and the logic of capital. In this context, symbols no longer corre- spond to or conceal any concrete reality but instead become detached from their original referents. As a result, people are easily manipulated and controlled by information and media, gradually losing the ability to make independent judgments.


Through my art, I aim to awaken the viewer’s perception and critical thinking, encouraging them to explore, decode, and dismantle various “black boxes.” In doing so, I hope they can discern the truth of events for themselves and re- sist the pull of passive conformity. My recent Spatial Reality series is closely connected to these concerns. Working in vast and often extreme environments such as deserts, fro- zen lakes, and remote mountain landscapes, I use minimal materials such as strands of light, reflective surfaces, and subtle spatial interventions to reveal how perception can be shaped, framed, or distorted.


“These works treat space not

as a neutral backdrop but as an active body that carries social, cultural, and political

implications.”

By creating situations where the boundary between reali- ty and its representation becomes fluid, the series invites viewers to question what is seen, what is hidden, and how meaning is constructed within the spaces we inhabit.


You just mentioned treating space not as a neutral back- drop but as an active body and and I’m curious to hear more about that. Where does your interest in space come from and could you please expland on the role that spati- ality plays in your pieces?


“From an early age, I have regarded the environment itself as my creative arena, with space serving as a material in its own right.”


Even in my doctoral dissertation, I explored the aesthetics of urban design in Taiwan through Roland Barthes’ con- cept of “text,” positioning the urban designer as the “au- thor,” the urban space as the “text,” and the residents as its “readers.” From this perspective, the arrangement of objects and the composition of space can be seen as a form of artistic creation. In my recent work, whether land art, public art, or even ceramics, spatiality remains central. I consider the relationship between the work and its sur- roundings carefully, allowing space to become not merely a backdrop, but an integral, inseparable part of the piece.


Back to your project Spatial Reality now—can you tell us more about the process behind it? How, when and where did you bring it to life?


This work is part of a series I began during my residen- cy in Finland from late 2023 to early 2024. Creating in a completely different country meant that the work had to diverge from what I had made back home, which pushed me toward bolder and more experimental ideas. January in Finland is the coldest time of the year, and with the coun- try’s reputation as “the land of a thousand lakes,” I was inspired to work directly on a frozen lake. By summer, the same location transforms back into open water, making it

a fascinating and ephemeral exhibition space. The process involved extensive experimentation and spatial explora- tion. I tested the thickness and safety of the ice by tapping and drilling into it, experimented with how light appeared under varying layers of snow, and observed how weather changes and snowmelt affected the work. I found that the best conditions required extreme cold and fresh snowfall. However, the low temperatures also drained the batteries of my cameras and drones quickly, which meant I had to warm them using my own body heat.


Because I was working alone on the frozen lake, I would tell the other resident artists before leaving that if I was not back in three hours, they should come find me on the lake. This was said half-jokingly but also with genuine concern for my safety. I carried an array of equipment in- cluding drones, a 360-degree camera, a DSLR, a phone, and multiple tripods, positioning them at different angles to capture the creation process.


That sounds like a very unique and adventurous experi- ence. Was there any moment during the residency you’d say you treasure the most?


One of the moments I treasure most was lying alone at night in the middle of the frozen lake, gazing up at the stars. The world felt completely silent and free from hu- man interference, allowing me to listen to the subtle sounds of nature. I see space as a living body, and by im- mersing ourselves within it, we experience its authentici- ty. This authenticity emerges from the interaction between the individual and the environment’s character, essence, and atmosphere.


“The cold, steady surface of the

lake, stretching from beneath my body to the expanse of the night sky, connected imagined space

with tangible reality, allowing both to coexist.”

Let’s stick with the creative process for another question

—do you follow any routines or habits that help stimulate your creative work?


Traveling and spending time in nature, as well as allowing myself moments of complete stillness, have become es- sential parts of my creative routine. Traveling allows me to step outside the familiar frameworks of daily life, encoun- ter different cultures, landscapes, and people, and gain fresh perspectives and ideas. Immersing myself in natu- ral environments, whether in the mountains, by a river, or within vast open landscapes, helps me reset my senses and tune in to the sounds, scents, and shifting light of the surroundings.


Equally important is the act of emptying my mind. This period of stillness gives my thoughts the chance to settle and reorganize. Often, genuine creativity does not emerge under pressure but surfaces naturally in moments that seem unproductive on the surface. These habits help me maintain an open mindset and a heightened sensitivity whenever I return to the process of making art.


Parallel to your work as an artist, you’re also a profes- sor at National Taitung University in Taiwan. How does teaching influence your art practice and vice versa?


As a university professor, I believe my role goes far beyond lecturing in the classroom or guiding students through studio exercises. I actively involve them in real-world projects such as curating exhibitions, managing cultural programs, and participating in my own art productions so they can experience firsthand how different kinds of pro- jects operate. These opportunities not only broaden their understanding but also enrich their professional experi- ence. For me, art-making and teaching are inseparable; they constantly inform and inspire each other.


We’re already approaching the end of our conversation, so I have a few last questions for you. First, is there any advice you’ve been given that you’d like to pass on to fellow artists, especially to those just starting out?

There is a saying that “failure is the mother of success.” Many of my creative breakthroughs have been built upon lessons learned from repeated failures, whether in exper- imenting with materials, achieving the desired presenta- tion, or finding effective ways to convey an idea. These imperfect moments are valuable, and I encourage others to accept and embrace them, as they will ultimately make you stronger.


Next, when you are the viewer and not the author of an artwork, what is it that draws you towards a piece of art?


I am most drawn to works that resonate with my own ex- periences or emotions. This sense of resonance does not necessarily come from the subject matter itself; it can also emerge from the sincerity and depth the artist conveys, or from an atmosphere that is difficult to articulate yet pro- foundly moving.

I am particularly interested in works that challenge my perceptions or offer new ways of seeing the world. Wheth- er through the transformation of space, the use of ma- terials, or an interpretation of time and memory, such works reveal the artist’s unique observation of life and the world. When a piece engages me on a sensory level and also sparks an ongoing dialogue in my mind, I find it worth pausing for and exploring in depth.


And, finally, what are your hopes and dreams for the fu- ture?


My dream is to travel the world, and I hope to realize this through art by participating in residencies and exhibitions in different countries. Immersing myself in new environ- ments and engaging with diverse cultures will continue to bring fresh perspectives and ideas into my work.

Get in touch with Lin: www.chang-rong.org Instagram: @changrong_art



Spatial Reality, 2024

The land art is presented through photography and fine art giclée printing, 49 x 28 cm




Up: Spatial Boundari, 2025, The land art is presented through photography and fine art giclée printing, 49 x 28 cm Down: Spatial Reality, 2024, The land art is presented through photography and fine art giclée printing, 49 x 28 cm




Up: Spatial Reality, Norway, 2024, The land art is presented through photography and fine art giclée printing, 49 x 28 cm Down: The Container to the Earth’s Core, 2024, ceramic, 300 x 200 x 50 cm

- Suboart Magazine -


Elahe


Sediment


Psychic wounds never truly disappear; they only settle and accumulate in the layers of time. Past, present, and future are not separate, but an extension of a continuous pain—roots woven into the fabric of identity. These psy- chic wounds are deposited deep within us, continuing to influence our behaviors, choices, and silences. At a certain point in my life, it felt as though my connection with the “self ” had fractured. A desire to vanish, to withdraw from

the world, and a yearning to disappear from others’ field of vision emerged within me—a striving to fade away from the margins of perception. This rupture marked the begin- ning of a process where nature ceased to be a refuge and became a realm for confronting the hidden self. A con- frontation with this internal disconnection, and a journey to reclaim the self that had sedimented beneath layers of roles, expectations, and silences.


About Me


My name is Elahe, and photography for me is more than just a simple visual medium; it is a way to express myself—a bridge connecting my feelings, thoughts, and inner reflections that words alone cannot fully convey. Photography is a tool for me to deeply understand myself and the world around me; sometimes by revisiting my personal wounds and weaving together my past, present, and future, and other times by tracing the lines of hardship and effort on the faces of nomadic people. This path is not merely about capturing images; it is an internal and external dialogue—a journey where others’ stories intersect with my lived experiences to create new and meaning ful perspectives.


I am 33 years old and hold a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, but my life’s path has led me away from my field of study. After finishing university, I turned to photography, a passion that had always been present in the back of my mind. This art allowed me to express emotions that words could not contain and deepened and enriched my understanding of life.


Every project is an opportunity for me to immortalize special moments using modern techniques and diverse viewpoints; an experience that each time opens a new window to the world and broadens my horizon. One of my most important and profound works is the series “Residue,” in which I explore the traumas and deep wounds of my soul. This collection was an opportunity for me to soothe some of those inner pains through the art of photography and advance my path toward self-discovery. “Residue” is not merely a reflection of personal pain; it transforms those feelings into a visual language that evokes empathy and deeper understanding in the viewer. This collection is a place where wounds are not seen as weak- nesses, but as part of the process of growth and healing, artistically expressed and marking a new beginning for a more meaning ful and fulfilling life.


Get in touch with Elaheh: linktr.ee/asurapics Instagram: @elahe.dehghaniii


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Both works: Sediment, 2025 Photography

- Suboart Magazine -


Aliza Katzman


Revealing a Story of the Hybrid


Aliza Katzman is a Brooklyn-based painter and printmak- er interested in the power of narrative and taxonomical frameworks. Inspired by the constant interface between the natural world and human society, their work explores parallels between naturalistic imagery and our psychoso- cial landscape.


Aliza draws on a host of influences to experiment with the visual language of storytelling: comics, scientific research, history texts, religion, and folklore. Portraying stylized, fantastically entangled subjects within the borders of torn pages, Aliza’s works on paper reference the material’s function as a means for communication and storytelling, and highlight the reality of the story as a created thing.


By addressing the subjectivity and potential limitations of existing frameworks, they aim to make art about the expe- riences which fall between the cracks of intelligibility - hu- man and nonhuman blur, revealing a story of the hybrid, the monstrous, and the fantastical.


About Aliza


Born (1998) and raised in the CA Bay Area, Aliza Katzman is a nonbinary artist whose queer identity and mixed herit- age (Ashkenazi Jewish, Korean, and Irish) influences their interest in social cohesion, taxonomy, and storytelling. They received a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute. Their work has been shown across the CA Bay Area, Port- land, Miami, Boston, Brooklyn, and Tidaholm, Sweden. Previously, Aliza has been an Artist in Residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley CA, and at the New York Academy of Art in New York City.


Get in touch with Aliza: www.alizakatzman.com

Instagram: @alizakatzman Up: Inside Out, 2025, oil on panel, 16 x 20 in Down: Sunflowers, 2025, oil on paper, 18 x 24 in



- Suboart Magazine -

Up: Nothing Left To Say, 2025, oil on paper, 30 x 48 in Down: Substrate, 2023, oil on paper, 36 x 48 in


In our culture,

I believe there is a vital need for

simplicity—paring down to the bare essentials and

fostering moments of patience, pause, and reflection.

- Natalie Dunham


Page 123 (next page): No. 4.526.13_S [ CC ], 2025, wood and metal, 139cm x 61cm x 13cm Page 124: No. 6.2231.20_PS [ 5C ], 2025, nylon-coated screen and metal, 92cm x 79cm x 16cm


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I'

1

1

- Suboart Magazine -


Talking Materials

and Geometr y


with



Natalie

Dunham

Natalie Dunham lives and works in Daytona Beach, FL, USA


Hi Natalie, it’s a pleasure to have you. Let’s start with a few basics—who are you and what do you do?


I am a sculptor and installation artist. I received my BFA in painting from Birmingham-Southern College, in Birming- ham, AL, in 2007 and my MFA in sculpture from the Mary- land Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, MD, in 2010. My artwork has been collected and exhibited both nationally and internationally. I currently live and work in the United States, with an additional workspace in Europe.


You describe yourself as a process-based artist, creating geometrical sculptures and studies from different mate- rials such as wood, iron or textiles, for example. Can you please tell us more about your work?


That’s right, my work is process-based, focusing on the creation of three-dimensional material studies and sketches. These are primarily composed of basic geometric shapes and lines, developed through the method of accu-

mulation. Each study is meticulously assigned a numerical title, serving as both a record of the materials and process- es used and a narrative thread that reflects the evolution of my artistic journey. This systematic approach documents my creative exploration and invites viewers to engage more deeply, encouraging reflection on the significance of each element within the broader context of artistic develop- ment.


What fascinates you about geometry and who are some of

the artists that have influenced your practice?


I was influenced by various minimalist artists from the 1960s, such as Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, and Carl Andre, early in my career. I was attracted to the basic geometric forms, monochromatic color palettes, and the elimination of unnecessary details to highlight the essential qualities of the work. I admired the sense of purity and objectivi- ty, encouraging viewers to engage more deeply with the fundamental aspects of the art. My work closely relates

- Suboart Magazine -




No. 1.132.5_S [ B+N ], 2019

Wood and metal, 61cm x 36cm x 16cm


to these principles. In our culture, I believe there is a vi- tal need for simplicity—paring down to the bare essentials and fostering moments of patience, pause, and reflection.


Let’s talk about materials for a moment—how do you select the materials you work with and what role do the materials play in your practice?


Whether it’s the texture, color, or shape, I select materials based on their inherent qualities. This approach fosters an authentic connection between the material and the con- cept, ensuring that the integrity of the original elements remains evident. At the same time, I employ careful re- finement and deliberate manipulation to elevate these ma- terials.


“The tension between their raw origins and the refined outcome is navigated through a mindful

balance—respecting the material’s characteristics while shaping them with precision and intent.”

This process aims to highlight the transformative potential of simple, everyday elements, resulting in works that are both rooted in their origins and elevated through accumu- lation and composition.


A piece I’m curious to learn more about is “No. 16.8512.11_

CF [ N ],” can you please tell me more about it?


No.16.8512.11_CF [ N ] was a commissioned suspended in- stallation created for Shaw Industries/Anderson Tuftex for their Surfaces International exhibition booth in Las Vegas. The white hanging material is carpet fiber that they pro- vided. To achieve the texture, eleven large spools of fiber were utilized to produce a total of 8,512 individual strings that draped from the powder-coated steel frame.


And three last questions to wrap this up. First, what are you currently working on?


I am currently working on one of the smallest pieces I have created to date. Despite its modest size, it is composed of 49,489 individual elements, which is the highest number of individual elements I have incorporated into a sculpture or installation thus far.


Next, if I asked you to describe your work in three words only, what would those be?


Repetition, Accumulation, Simplicity


And last one, please complete the following sentence:

To me, art is…


…not merely a finished product but a dynamic journey that unfolds over time, revealing layers of thought, experimen- tation, and discovery.


Next page ( left): No. 295.738.1R_[ UST ], 2023, Strapping, 95cm x 21cm x 9cm Right: No. 1.437.2_F [white], 2024, fabric, 95cm x 21cm x 9cm


Get in touch with Natalie: www.nataliedunham.com Instagram: @n_dunham

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Up: No. 6.788.20_S [cb.gold], 2019, wood and metal, 61cm x 241cm x 13cm

Down: No. 16.8512.11_CF [ N ], 2018, Metal and carpet fiber, 518cm x 366cm x 366cm Left page: No. 19.1.22_PS, 2014, wood and nylon coated screen, 114cm x 487cm x 183cm


- Suboart Magazine -

Dear artists,

Thank you for allowing us to share your works with our readers. Creating this magazine has been a real pleasure.

All the best for your future artistic ventures, maybe our paths will cross again.


Nina Seidel & Carolina Castilho

(Editors)



Additional credits & information

Cover image: Brittney Francis, Cheers, 2023, Digital Collage


Unless otherwise noted, the images used in this publication have been taken by the artists. All images have been provided by the artists, who have granted Suboart Magazine the non-exclusive rights to publish them in this publication.


Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and receive updates on open calls, interviews, artist features and more. www.suboartmagazine.com/join

www.suboartmagazine.com / www.suboart.com / Instagram: @suboartmagazine


Editorial


Copyright artists, authors, Suboart Magazine. All Rights reserved. Suboart Magazine is published by Suboart Magazine in Lisbon, Portugal, and is currently sold via print on demand and digitally. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means digitally or manually, including photocopying, recording, online publishing, or otherwise without prior written permission from Suboart Magazine. All images have been provided by the artists who have granted Suboart Magazine the non-exclusive right to publish them. Design, editorial & writing: Suboart Magazine. September 2025, Lisbon, Portugal.


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