ON SALE NOW

Rachel Verghis, founder of VerghisArt, photographed through the highball glass by Linder, an artist known known for her photography, radical feminist photomontage and performance art

At a recent salon in the London home of Rachel Verghis to celebrate her solo show at the Hayward, Linder took pictures her style, grabbing a highball glass from the bar to shoot her subjects through

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

Linder is the former punk whose artwork rang out on the cover of the first single by the legendary Buzzcocks. She has since become one of Britain’s most enduring artists, working in a variety of media, always championing feminism, always outraged at the patriarchy, always countercultural.

Behind the scenes of Linder photographing Philip Colbert through the highball glass

A self portrait by Linder

Dina Kamal Marchant, by Linder

Sigrid Kirk, by Linder

Linder and Rachel Verghis photographed together, with her work in Verghis’ collection

Francesco Maccapani Missoni at work in his Milan studio

The artist, author, entrepreneur and scion of the Italian luxury fashion house opens his address book on Milan, garden cities, inspiration and his art

LUX: Where should an artist visit in Milan?

Francesco Maccapani Missoni: Three galleries: Spazio Maiocchi, in via Achille Maiocchi; Spazio MMXX, in via Donatello; and Matta, in via Privata Giacomo Favretto. All these have the best underground and alternative art vibes.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

LUX: Where do you go to in Milan to be seen?

FMM: Bar Basso, in via Plinio, a classic bar where you must have the “mistaken” Negroni, the Negroni Sbagliato, invented there in the 70s. Then there’s SottoSotto on the corner of via Albertini and via Paolo Sarpi, which has a great food and wine selection. And, of course, Camparino on Piazza Duomo.

Optical Dissuasions, by Francesco Maccapani Missoni

LUX: And where do you go to not be seen?

FMM: I stay home.

LUX: Is the influx of global wealth to Milan a good thing?

Read more: A tasting of top Napa Cabernet Sauvignons with Paul Hobbs

FMM: No! Wealth makes things impersonal and inhuman.

LUX: Where can a visitor to the city find the best Milanese food?

FMM: Trattoria Masuelli San Marco, in viale Umbria, for the milanesine di vitello and risotto alla milanese; Trattoria Milanese dal 1933, in via Santa Marta – you must have the risotto al salto; and Al Matarel, in via Solera Mantegazza – ask for the rustin negàa, it’s the original cotoletta.

Aiming for Love, by Francesco Maccapani Missoni

LUX: What’s the best day trip from Milan?

FMM: Varese, my home town. It’s called la città giardino, or the garden city.

LUX: Where do you go to be inspired?

FMM: I don’t go anywhere for inspiration for my art. Any place can bring ideas.

Read more: A sojourn in Egypt

LUX: The most overrated part of Milan?

FMM: The quadrilatero shopping area: Manzoni, Montenapoleone… Predictable.

LUX: How has Missoni inspired your work?

FMM: That’s easy. I have grown up in a world of patterns and colours. They are in my spine.

Missoni with his mother Angela, grandmother Rosita and sister Margherita

LUX: What are your favourite places to see contemporary art in Milan?

FMM: Fondazione Prada and Pirelli Hangar Bicocca. They are simply the two best spaces to see art, especially big exhibitions.

LUX: What’s a secret city gem that you love?

FMM: Naviglio della Martesana. It’s a 40km-long canal, worth visiting for its quiet and picturesque atmosphere. The towpath is perfect for walking, running or cycling, away from the chaos and smog of the city.

LUX: What’s next for you and your work?

FMM: I’ve several projects I’m excited about. In Venice, we are talking about an exhibition with other artists during the Biennale. Then Bodrum for the summer. For September I’ve been invited to Parallel Vienna, an annual contemporary art fair in Vienna. And, well, there might be something big in October/November in Istanbul. Watch this space.

fmmarts.com

Paul Hobbs, one of the most celebrated names in the world of wine, photographed in one of the Paul Hobbs Wines vineyards

Paul Hobbs has been a leader in the wine world for decades, so much so that his eponymous wines now have a brand that shines independently of the man. LUX gets together with Hobbs himself for a conversation and tasting of his top Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons, sourced from particular vineyard sites

Paul Hobbs is a wine world legend, so much so that one might be surprised that he can be interviewed. Like Louis Vuitton for fashion or Henri Jayer for Burgundy, he is surely a name, not a person.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

But Hobbs, one of the founding team of Opus One and maker of some of North America’s legendary cabernet sauvignons, pinot noirs and chardonnays, is very much alive, well, and on a Zoom with LUX.

Paul Hobbs foster a range of vineyards that stretch across the Russian River Valley, West Sonoma Coast, and Napa Valley

He is a strict, precise interviewee – not someone you feel who would suffer fools or who has much time for small talk. “Wine was not on my radar when I was growing up,” he says in response to a question about whether wine was in his blood like it is with so many other wine legends. He explains that he grew up on a farm in rural New York and it was only when his father took him to visit one of the nascent wineries (then becoming famous for Riesling) in the scenic Finger Lakes area that his interest awoke.

Still, he intended to be a medical doctor – something easy to imagine him as, with a thoroughness of air – but was eventually seduced by wine, even writing a doctorate on the attributes of different oak barrels at America’s Sorbonne of wine: University of California at Davis.

The flagship Nathan Coombs Estate in the Napa Valley, named after the founder of the City of Napa

His scientific background “gave [him] an advantage” over others starting out in the wine industry, he believes, and this rigour stands out in the current precision of production of some of the world’s greatest Cabernet Sauvignons from single vineyard sites in the Napa Valley, which we proceed to taste together.

Read more: A sojourn in Egypt

Hobbs is not an outwardly emotional man but says he is “proud to be at the leading edge” of what he does, setting standards and creating concepts that others aspire to – and he has now done so for decades.

A bottle of the 2021 Nathan Coombs, described by Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai as a ‘dormant volcano’

Tasting notes by Darius Sanai

2021 Nathan Coombs

From a (relatively) cooler part of Napa, this tasted like a dormant volcano in the best way. Power and might and richness, but with a kind of geological precision to it. One to drink at Arzak over roe deer loin, black trumpet leaves and mushrooms

2021 Beckstoffer Dr. Crane

This is a wine to toast a billion dollar deal with, from your mansion above Montecito. Endless in its flavours and layers, it is also a wine for the ages, and if you’re a confident investor in a California longevity company we would suggest cellaring it for the next 100 years and enjoying it in 2126.

Paul Hobbs with his attention to detail in the vineyard

2021 Las Piedras

This is a cult wine for many collectors in the US, and tasting it for the first time, I wanted to be in the LUX mountain hideaway above Aspen (still in planning stage) with three poets and four artists, pondering every savoury, mountain-tinged sip in the forest.

Read more: Arch Hades in conversation with Catherine Loewe

2021 Beckstoffer To Kalon

To Kalon is a vineyard in the Napa Valley known to many as the Chateau Latour of Napa, or perhaps its should be known as the Grands Echezeaux, as wine is made from it by a few producers. This wine is as long as the sky, and we would drink it now either with our last meal, or at dinner with Anne-Sophie Pic (herself) in the rookery of an Umbrian castello, in late autumn, after a rain shower, over a six-course menu she rustled up in the 13th-century kitchen.

paulhobbswinery.com

A figure reads the world’s news beneath the gaze of the ancient Sphinx, photographed by Maryam Eisler

Egypt is a country on the lips of smart cultural leaders everywhere, with the annual Art d’Egypte fair a contemporary anchor to thousands of years of culture. Across these pages, Rania Al Khalifa writes a paean to accompany a photographic portfolio by Maryam Eisler

Anchored by the long-awaited debut of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), Egypt is currently experiencing a profound cultural renaissance. For me, it was the necessary catalyst for a return visit after a 38-year hiatus, and to take a journey along its ancient river – a chance to see if the country that Herodotus called the “gift of the Nile” still held its ancient magnetism.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

Cairo is a city of glorious, productive friction. We began with two nights at the Four Seasons Cairo Nile Plaza, centrally perched and pulsing with the city’s energy. Between the dust-caked majesty of the Giza Plateau and the sleek, limestone-and-glass futuristic designs of the GEM, Cairo offers a short, sharp spurt of chaos that serves as a vital preamble to the Nile’s slower tempo.

They say the light in Luxor hits different; a syrupy, amber glow that seems to emanate from the limestone itself. Landing in ancient Thebes feels like an immediate shedding of the modern world. To truly lean into the romance of the site, one must stay at the Sofitel Winter Palace Luxor. Here the ghosts of former guests Howard Carter and Agatha Christie still seem to linger in the high-ceilinged corridors of a palace that served as one of King Farouk’s favourite winter residences.

Read more: Arch Hades in conversation with Catherine Loewe

While the Big Three – Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple and the Valley of the Kings – are non-negotiable, I recommend veering off the mainstream to include Dendera Temple. It is a place where you realise the staggering breadth of Egyptian theology. Between the tongue-twisting names of Akhenaten and Ahmose, you eventually stop trying to memorise facts and simply start feeling the weight of history. It is a humbling curriculum in human insignificance.

The transition from Luxor to Aswan is best served by a dahabiya. We boarded the Roman by Nour el Nil, a 10-cabin vessel that epitomises rustic chic. This is unabashedly analogue travel: no pool, no gym, just the snap of a sail and the high-touch service of a devoted crew. Sailing on a dahabiya is a study in the melancholic rhythm of the river.

Read more: Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda’s art manifesto

The pièce de résistance of the south is Abu Simbel. Many travellers omit this due to its proximity to the Sudanese border, but to skip it is to miss the soul of the empire. I have stood in the silent shadows of Angkor Wat and watched the clouds lift over Machu Picchu, but I have never felt as physically and spiritually dwarfed as I did beneath the four seated figures of Ramesses II. Carved directly into the Nubian sandstone, these statues were a definitive line in the sand, a celestial warning that Egypt’s power began here and ended nowhere.

Egypt remains a land where the only thing that moves faster than the Nile’s current is the imagination. A ten-day journey here doesn’t just fill a passport, it recalibrates the soul.

Rania Al Khalifa

Photographic portfolio and words by Maryam Eisler

At Gebel el-Silsila, where the Nile slips softly between walls of sun-burned sandstone, the chapel of pharaoh Merneptah (a son of Ramesses II) is carved like a whispered prayer – a son’s quiet claim to immortality. Although less monumental than his father’s structures, Merneptah’s chapel reflects a continuity of royal presence along the Nile and the religious importance of this quarry region.

She stands beneath the ancient gaze of the Sphinx, unfolding today’s news while millennia watch in silence behind her. Smoke curls into the desert sky, and for a moment the modern world drifts softly against the face of infinitude.

At Luxor Temple, a guide stands half revealed between ancient stones, as if emerging from the hieroglyphs that surround him. Suspended between shadow and sunlight, he feels less like a man in passing and more like a messenger from another age.

From the quiet drift of the boat at dusk, the palms rise like darkened lace against a sky still holding the last gold of day.

Beneath the shadow of the Temple of Esna, where the deity Khnum once shaped humankind from Nile clay, a worker bends into the dust as though continuing the god’s unfinished work. In the golden light, his gaze holds the same ancient gravity: earth on his hands, eternity in his stare.

At Giza, the pyramid of the pharaoh Khafre rises from the desert like a flame turned to stone, holding the last light of day as if it were a secret whispered to the ages.

Maryam Eisler

Arch Hades, London, March 2026, by Maryam Eisler

Arch Hades’ multidisciplinary practice oscillates between poetry, painting and text-based installation, shaped by existential philosophy and an unflinching engagement with the human condition. She speaks to Catherine Loewe about grief, gender, power and the inspiration behind her most monumental work, unveiled during this year’s Venice Biennale, accompanied by portraits by Maryam Eisler

Catherine Loewe: Your route into the arts was unconventional: you had an earlier career in politics, then published six volumes of poetry. How did the transition into visual art occur?

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

Arch Hades: It began with failure. I took Art at GCSE, but when a teacher lost my coursework I was downgraded to a grade B. At my academically competitive school, I was told not to bother doing Art for A level or applying to art school, so I didn’t. I did, however, excel in Politics. I took a year out before university to work in Parliament and continued throughout my degree. I didn’t even attend my graduation – I didn’t want to take the day off. I was locked in for years, until I grew disillusioned and decided it was time to try and do something creative. Turns out politics is not that different from the arts. Politics is competitive storytelling.

A studio view of Return, 2025, by Arch Hades

The pivotal moment came when my fourth book Arcadia was illustrated and sold as a digital film at Christie’s for a tidy sum and I was able to set up a home studio. The reward for making art is you get to make more art. I spent the pandemic writing books and re-training as a painter. I was 30 by the time I picked up a paintbrush since my B at GCSE. It’s been a journey.

CL: How has your time in the political sphere impacted your practice? Are you engaged in gender politics?

AH: Oh boy, my whole life is gender politics. Making art as a woman is inherently political because it represents a rejection of the traditional life of silent service, even if the work itself isn’t explicitly political. Some of my poetry does address politics directly – particularly 21st Century Human, which includes a section titled 21st Century Woman on emotional labour and gender expectations.

My visual practice is rooted in existentialism, which I see as a political philosophy. Existentialism insists on responsibility without divine authority: meaning must be made, not received. Historically, as women, we have come so far – once we couldn’t vote, open bank accounts or wear trousers, and that exclusion was normalised. Progress depends on better choices and accountability. I want to see powerful men being held responsible for their actions. There is more to hope and fight for.

Roots, 2025, by Arch Hades

CL: What are your defining moments?

AH: Experiencing loss and grief at an early age. Once death enters your life, it never fully leaves. It’s impossible to explain human cruelty to a child. After profound loss washes over you, all beauty becomes marked by tragedy – by its inevitable impermanence and the knowledge that none of this is ours, we are only permitted to enjoy it for a while. There is a glory in that. It’s a privilege to love what death does not touch.

Read more: Arch Hades’ Return at the Venice Biennale

CL: What do you look for in an extraordinary work of art?

AH: The mysterious and the inexplicable: I’m drawn to works I cannot fully rationalise, those I return to again and again. One of my favourite paintings is Cow Beside a Ditch by Willem Maris. There is nothing ostensibly remarkable about it, yet it feels as though it was painted specifically for me. Donna Tartt describes this sensation perfectly in The Goldfinch as “the nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag”.

The Sea, The Sea, 2025, by Arch Hades

CL: Which artists have shaped your visual language?

AH: The list is ever growing, but I always return to René Magritte, Franz Sedlacek, Andrew Wyeth, Tamara de Lempicka and Francis Bacon – artists who balance precision with unease and return insistently to the human condition.

CL: Who are your favourite poets, living and dead?

AH: Byron, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver, WH Auden, Carol Ann Duffy, Joseph Brodsky and Pablo Neruda.

CL: What is your current obsession?

AH: Byzantine iconography. It’s supremely stylised and unapologetically confident: elongated forms, flattened space, strict geometry, repetition of symbols and often bizarre human expressions. In my new series I replace human saints with scenes of nature – a not-so-subtle nod to what we should really be worshipping.

It’s time to return the love I borrowed, Confessions series, 2025, by Arch Hades

CL: Can you describe your working process?

AH: I begin at the end. Whether writing or painting, I visualise the final state before I start. In poetry, I often write the last line first. I first need to articulate to myself what I want the viewer or reader to feel, then visualise the final composition, textures and rhythm before executing the steps. I’m not spontaneous or carefree, I’m a planner.

CL: How do you think about colour?

Read more: Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda’s art manifesto

AH: I love the drama of monochrome and draw great inspiration from filmmakers like Tarkovsky and Fritz Lang.

Too many colours overstimulate me – orange in particular makes my skin itch. I haven’t worn anything but black for years. Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates demonstrates how restrained colour, glazed against near-monochrome scenes, can be devastatingly effective. In my own work, I typically introduce only two colours – ultramarine blue-green and alizarin crimson – to pull the eye toward the central subjects of the composition.

I catch myself mourning the present like it’s already a memory, Confessions series, 2025, by Arch Hades

CL: Tell us about Return (2025), the centrepiece of your upcoming Venice exhibition.

AH: Return is a 13-metre-wide, 22-panel painting composed of 63 life-size nude figures, installed across three walls, like an altar triptych. It’s the largest scale project I’ve undertaken and a huge honour to be invited by the Erarta Foundation to show in a beautiful decommissioned church on the Grand Canal.

The work draws inspiration from Gustav Klimt’s lost Faculty Paintings, particularly his vision of bodies drifting through a symbolic river of life. My figures echo Greco-Roman sculpture: they flow, merge and ultimately dissolve into a black abyss at the centre, tracing the full spectrum of human emotion – grief, fear, desire, tenderness. Some are tributes to family and friends; others reference art history – the Three Graces, or Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina in the Galleria Borghese.

Klimt’s Faculty Paintings have a tragic history. Commissioned in 1894 for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, the panels – on Medicine, Philosophy and Jurisprudence – were destroyed when retreating German SS forces set fire to the building. Only preparatory sketches and photographs remain. That sense of loss, of cultural memory erased feels profoundly relevant.

Return | Ritorno  unfolds across three floors of the Scoletta Battioro e Tiraoro di Venezia, a decommissioned church on the Grand Canal in Venice. Photograph by Eva Herzog

CL: You’re also presenting Sphinx, an interactive sculpture that integrates visual art and poetry.

AH: Every sculpture begins with a poem. I look for ways to materialise language as a physical object, using acrylic polymer and mirrors to explore reflection, transparency and opacity. Debuting Sphinx in Venice feels fitting. I loved the riddle as a child, the idea of the self as a traveller passing through time. That question – the nature of being human – runs through everything I do. We labour in webs spun long before we were born, but we can still shape our fate.

Read more: Jennifer Shorto’s highlights of the Cora Sheibani collection

My optimism comes from lived experience. My mother took us out of a totalitarian environment and into this dream of democracy, where individual choices matter. It is not hopeless or useless.

CL: Text continues to play a central role in your practice. Can you tell us more?

AH: Writing has always sought permanence – from The Epic of Gilgamesh onward. Poetry demands vulnerability, and connection demands authenticity. My Confessions series, which will also be included in the Venice show, draws on decades of journalling. I enlarge handwritten diary fragments onto concrete and marble slabs, transforming private confession into public object. Here, text is not illustrative – it is the work. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn’t. It requires vulnerability, but I’ve found that the phrases I was most afraid to reveal are often the ones that resonate the most with audiences.

Return | Ritorno in progress in the studio, courtesy of Arch Hades

CL: We’re living through profound cultural and political shifts. How do you situate yourself within this moment?

AH: I hate that we are transitioning from nature as our host of life to mass technology as our environment. That’s what Arcadia, my fourth book, is about. We risk losing something ancient and essential in the process.

CL: Which artwork would you live with, if you could?

AH: Malevich’s Black Square, displayed in the corner as originally intended. It articulates one of my central philosophical positions: the rejection of religious authority and challenging tradition that ultimately celebrates existentialism. I don’t believe I should own it – but perhaps I could borrow it?

CL: If you could have lunch with anyone you admire, who would it be?

AH: Goodness, there are so many people I look up to. Living: Maria Ressa, Anne Applebaum, Maia Sandu. And dead: Jane Goodall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mileva Marić.

I’d like to have lunch with Shabana Mahmood, the [UK] Home Secretary, or Bridget Phillipson, [UK] Minister for Women and Equalities, to persuade them to bring forward policy to create a publicly accessible nationwide register of stalkers, domestic abusers, sexual offenders and anyone convicted of killing their female partner. Up to a quarter of these men are repeat offenders and I believe women should have access to information about someone’s history of sexual violence, if they are considering dating them. This will save lives and is a vital step towards protecting women and girls.

Arch Hades, London, March 2026, by Maryam Eisler

CL: What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?

AH: Don’t get married. In fact, don’t even date anybody.

CL: What’s something that people don’t know about you?

AH: I’m an ordained minister. I’m not religious, I just enjoy officiating gay marriages.

Read more: A conversation with Claudio Laager

CL: What do you hope audiences take away from your work?

AH: I hope my art and poetry might become the “nail where your fate is liable to snag”. Like reading something you thought only happened to you, only to discover it happened to Byron 200 years ago. That recognition collapses time and liberates suffering and isolation. This is why art matters – because life matters.

Arch Hades’ solo exhibition, Return | Ritorno, runs from 7 May to 30 October 2026 at Scoletta Battioro e Tiraoro di Venezia

archhades.com

The historic Burlington House on Piccadilly, which houses the Royal Academy of Arts, featuring the courtyard statue of the RA’s first President, artist Sir Joshua Reynolds

To the hundreds of thousands who visit its exhibitions every year, the Royal Academy of Arts is a must-visit museum on the European art circuit. Like its peers at the top of the art world, it has created shows that have redefined the art scene, including ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ in 1981 and 1997’s ‘Sensation’; more recently, it has hosted blockbuster solo shows by the likes of Marina Abramović and William Kentridge – both, coincidentally, artists who have created cover logos for LUX. But the RA has a lesser-known jewel in its crown. As the name says, it is an academy – an art school, probably the world’s most respected – with studios housing artists on a three-year immersion course in its premises at the heart of Mayfair. It even has its own design technology studios and sculpture kiln. Eliza Bonham Carter, the celebrated Director of the RA Schools, was invited to create the LUX logo for our cover this issue, while Renoir Saulter, one of her students, imagines his own working of our cover on these pages

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

“The breadth of talent that comes from the RA Schools is amazing, from Constable and Turner to Millais, and now to Michael Armitage, Rachel Jones and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. In the life-drawing room, we still have the original benches where Constable and Turner learned to draw”

– Batia Ofer, Chair, Royal Academy Trust

“The Royal Academy Schools is an independent postgraduate school of art that offers a three-year programme. One of many remarkable aspects of the school is that it remains free of charge to all who study with us. We support speculative practice, experimentation and the possibilities of learning through making. The central focus is the studio, where each student explores their own practice supported by an academic structure and our specialist workshops. Our graduates go on to contribute meaningfully to culture in many ways, including through exhibitions, teaching, writing and curating”

– Eliza Bonham Carter, Director, Royal Academy Schools

“Being at the RA Schools is like a great plate of scran shared with the family or a cold pint after some hard graft. The experience is fruitful, mind-bending, hardcore and cosy. The whole staff, security and tutors really make the place feel like home”

– Renoir Saulter, artist and student, Royal Academy Schools

Reimagined LUX covers, with logos by artist and RA Schools student Renoir Saulter, and cover photograph of Batia Ofer by Simon de Pury

royalacademy.org.uk

Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda, photographed by Simon de Pury

Artist, artisan, thinker: Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda hails from one of the most significant Venetian families and is a contemporary reincarnation of a Renaissance rebel, with looks and connections to match. He tells LUX his manifesto for 2026 and beyond

“From next year, I’m not going to be an entrepreneur, nor an artist or a designer – I’m just going to be me. There should be a new word, perhaps, to communicate all those personas in one – like a kind of Frankenstein.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

I suppose putting things into categories is part of life. But for me, there’ll be no more putting things into boxes or letting others define what I am.

“Moduli Luminosi” solo exhibition at David Gill, London, 2025

From next year, my direction is clear: I’m focusing on my artistic development – on developing my creative soul, my language. I think others should “feel” what you are.

My question has always been: why am I creating work for the public to see? Is it to express my feelings? To confront social injustices? The new work I’m putting together is an attempt to answer that question.

Read more: Arch Hades’ Return at the Venice Biennale

My creative process has three stages. It starts with confusion – with an existentialist question, such as, “what’s the point of life?” The answers can be infinite. Then I start writing answers and asking more questions, digging until I get an answer to investigate with intensity. This stage is rough. I write differently. My hands hurt from how tightly I press the pencil. Then comes the final stage: peace. That intensity dissolves into a line, shape, drawn in pastel. At that point I’ve answered my question. I feel complete.

White Pool glassware designed by Alvise De Mezzo, by Laguna~B, of which Brandolini d’Adda is Artistic Director

In my next work, glass is out. People always say, “glass is your passion”, but it has never been a material I’ve liked to express myself with. I want to understand what I am doing and why and communicate that to the public. For now, that means not using glass. It might eventually come back in another form, but it’s a question I hope this research will answer.

Read more: Jennifer Shorto’s highlights of the Cora Sheibani collection

This work is important to me. I never went to art school, so this process of realising what life and art should be comes entirely from within. It’s not something I’ve been taught.

Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda at work in his studio

Coming from a famous family can be a challenge. But I see it as an opportunity, a tool to communicate with the public and understand what might be useful to them. I can’t hold a conversation for more than 10 minutes. If I can do it through art, then maybe my background will become a “fuck you” to everyone.

Venice is in my DNA. It’s a city that gives me tranquillity, space. But I want my business to grow beyond that – to stand alone. I will have an atelier open to the public in Venice. You may see some glass, but also what’s next – perhaps performance, or sculpture, too.

lagunab.com