identity – Art Spiel

October 22, 2025October 28, 2025, by Jessica Aguilar

Art Spiel Picks: Philadelphia Exhibitions in October 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Clay as Care Installation view. Photo by The Clay Studio

Just as a solitary action can cause a ripple effect, the sharing of unique ideas can inspire and transform existing systems to include and support different communities. The exhibitions this month demonstrate genuine curiosity and meaningful activation, leading to a trend of revisionist histories in art, institutional displays, or familial archives. Curators Jennifer Zwilling and Nicole Pollard reinvent how gallery exhibitions should be interacted with and ask the question of how clay can assist in caring for mental health at The Clay Studio. Artists Mahsa Attaran, Monica Hamilton, Hanieh Kashani, and Anna Schwartz create a language to describe the power of memory as they mine through personal photographs and materials at Automat Collective. Calero Rodríguez establishes her own History of Art, incorporating Latino, Afro, and Carribean imagery in masterly assembled collages at Taller Puertoriqueño.

September 29, 2025September 20, 2025, by Art Spiel

Jeffrey Morabito: The Caged Bird Sings

In Dialogue

Lan Shi, Curator, photo courtesy of Helen Chen

In 2019, an art acquisition trip brought curator Lan Shi from Beijing to New York. When the pandemic extended her stay, she shifted her focus and began working as a full-time freelance curator and art agent. Since then, she has organized more than a dozen exhibitions of varying scale, including her current project with artist Jeffrey Morabito.

July 17, 2025July 11, 2025, by Vita Eruhimovitz

Through the Kaleidoscope: Vojislav Radovanović on Dreams, Memory, and Finding Color in California

In Dialogue

*Vojislav Radovanović at the studio*. Photo by Jason Jenn

Vojislav Radovanović’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, installation, video, and performance. His work touches upon themes of queerness, memory, the immigrant experience, spirituality, and the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Influenced by his upbringing in Serbia during a time of war and social upheaval, Radovanović approaches art as a therapeutic space for healing and transformation. His process-driven works often combine recycled materials, vibrant color, and symbolic imagery to create poetic, emotionally resonant narratives. Through layered compositions and dreamlike logic, he invites viewers into a shared space of reflection, imagination, and emotional release.

May 28, 2025May 27, 2025, by Andrew Fish

Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions June 2025

Highlights

*Lucy Kim: Pigment Spells* at Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, MA. Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Gallery

Several wonderful exhibitions are on view in Boston this month and many more are scheduled for the summer, along with artist talks, performances, and events. Boston’s Public Art Triennial kicked off with a ribbon cutting and a party to celebrate the arrival of several new public art installations around the city for art goers to enjoy throughout the summer. The schools are getting ready for summer break but many of their galleries remain open with dynamic shows. Whether you visit the city, the Cape, or the Islands over the next few months, there is always something to see. Here are a few highlights to consider.

May 27, 2025May 28, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Wherever I Lay My Head at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning

In Dialogue

Group picture(Members in picture from left to right): Euijin V. Ra (artist), Julia D. Shaw (artist), Courteny Symone Staton (artist), Laura OsCam (artist), Sherwin Banfield (Program Manager), TEDF (artist), Marleen Moise (artist).

Wherever I Lay My Head, now on view at The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning , began with an invitation to Indira A. Abiskaroon to curate the culminating ARTWorks exhibition. The offer came from Program Manager Sherwin Banfield and was formalized in conversation with Director of Program Operations Wendy Arimah Berot. Abiskaroon’s first priority was to spend time with the ARTWorks Fellows—to learn how their practices had developed over the course of the program and to hear what ideas had been resonating in their weekly sessions.

April 23, 2025April 27, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Care / Condition / Control at 601Artspace

In Dialogue

Works by John Coplans (left) Jarret Key (center) and Melissa Stern (right). Photo courtesy of Etienne Frossard/601Artspace

The group exhibition Care / Condition / Control, which ends its run at 601Artspace on April 27th, takes its conceptual root, quite literally, in the form of hair. Experienced by different generations, cultures, genders, and identities, one’s relationship to the very follicles that grow from us and upon us is deeply personal and unique to each of us. As each artist mines their own stories from these relationships, Chapman expands upon the inspiration and undertaking of such a complicated and tangled subject. Yasmeen Abdallah interviews curator A.E. Chapman about the ideas behind this show.

December 9, 2024December 8, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Mindscape: Patterns of Identity at L’Space

A couple of men in a room

Description automatically generated — Moran Kliger, Installation

In the group show Mindscape: Patterns of Identity at L’Space, people, animals, and places shift and juxtapose, coming together like pieces of a map—one that charts the shared inner terrain of memory, trauma, and identity. Curated by Noa Rabinovich Lalo and Carolina Werebe, with L’Space founder Lily Almog, the show, as Almog puts it, draws on “a shared Israeli heritage and a deep connection to the contemporary art scene in Israel, a country with a rich cultural history and traditions amidst ongoing uncertainty.” And it’s that sense of uncertainty that pulls everything together—voids and absences linger in the air. Even when the work seems rooted in specific places, the setting remains layered and elusive, offering more questions than answers. This is evident in Netta Lieber Sheffer’s sweeping charcoal drawing installation of Sigmund Freud’s Vienna clinic, where he lived and worked for 47 years before fleeing the Nazis in 1938.

October 23, 2024December 22, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Prejudice and Belonging – the Ethiopian Pavilion in La Biennale di Venezia

Tesfaye Urgessa, Pavilion of ETHIOPIA, Prejudice and belonging, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photo by: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

The first national Ethiopian pavilion at the 60^th Venice Biennale, housed in the elegant sixteenth-century Palazzo Bollani, may be challenging to find, but the effort is amply rewarded. In his solo exhibition Prejudice and Belonging, Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa presents figures that inhabit a broad and complex emotional spectrum where fragility and strength coexist. Ethiopian iconography and European modernist figurative painting converge, creating a striking visual dialect articulated throughout the ten large paintings and small portraits that fill the three interconnected rooms.

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Bascha Mon’s Life and Journey of Dreaming at Tappeto Volante

In Dialogue

A Celebratory Retrospective of an Artist’s Life and Journey of Dreaming, Perseverance, Activism, & Unconscious Expression.”

The retrospective of Bascha Mon’s paintings at Tappeto Volante offers a focused look at an artist whose career has been shaped by both creative achievements and personal struggles. Mon first gained recognition in the 1970s and 80s, with numerous exhibitions and critical acclaim. However, her trajectory was interrupted by health challenges that led to a long period of seclusion. During this time, she continued to work from her basement studio in New Jersey, expanding her creative vocabulary across various mediums while remaining largely out of the public eye. In recent years, Mon turned to digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Paola Gallio, the exhibition curator and gallery co-founder, describes this phase as “dissolving the physical isolation that had once defined her situation.” These platforms allowed Mon to reconnect with the art community and sustain an active, visible presence. Gallio emphasizes that “Mon’s modest basement studio became a metaphor for boundless creative space,” where the constraints of physical isolation were replaced by the limitless possibilities of virtual engagement. For deeper insights into the retrospective, Gallio’s interview with Art Spiel offers further reflections on Mon’s artistic journey and the significance of this exhibition.

July 25, 2024July 24, 2024, by Art Spiel

Intimate Space, Entangling Threads – Sharon Liu and Hanna Hirakawa with Naomi Okubo

In Conversation

Naomi Okubo, *Little Mama – Closely Glazed Space*, 2024, acrylic on canvas, ©Naomi Okubo, courtesy of Fou Gallery

Naomi Okubo has been creating works that explore the themes of identity and relationships with others. Her paintings, sculptures, and installations often feature multiple portraits of herself in imaginary, fantasized settings full of decorative patterns and vibrant colors that blur the boundary between the self and the surrounding environment. This ambiguity regarding identity stems from her experiences of struggling to establish selfhood in relation to others during her adolescence. One of her turning points was when she developed her interest in Wardian cases or what she calls “closely glazed spaces.”