Atelier Zuhra’s latest collection “The Immaculate Flight of the Phoenix” showcased at London Fashion Week over the weekend. Image by Daniel John Cotton @cottonphotographer

Rayan Al Sulaimani is the female entrepreneur behind the growing couture fashion house Atelier Zuhra. Since its launch in 2015, Atelier Zuhra has had a growing presence on Hollywood’s red carpet. Following the launch of her latest collection at London Fashion Week, Emma Marnell speaks to the designer about fairytale dresses, timeless couture and her cultural heritage

Rayan Al Sulaimani

1. The brand is named after your grandmother – has she always been a style inspiration for you?

My grandmother Zuhra is a strong Omani woman with a great passion for living life to the fullest. Yes indeed, she has always been a style inspiration, but eventually through the years I have also developed my own unique sense of style.

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2. What led you to focus on evening wear and specifically, show-stopping dresses?

From a young age, it has always been my dream to dress celebrities for big red-carpet events in a fairytale like Cinderella gown or to dress a bride at her wedding and help her dreams come true. Hence, from the very beginning we have always focused on creating show-stopping dresses.

Atelier Zuhra’s LFW 2020 collection. Image by Garry Carbon @becauseimgarry

3. Can you talk us through the inspiration behind your LFW collection?

The collection is called “The Immaculate Flight of the Phoenix”.

In mythology the phoenix is a powerful bird which cyclically regenerates and is continually reborn over and over again in human legend and imagination. In the same way, this symbolises the beauty of ethereal everlasting couture as this immaculate bird represents the idea that the end is only ever the beginning.

Read more: Vik Muniz’s photography series for Ruinart

The LFW collection entwines beautiful tailoring with modern innovation and couture. The collection is brilliantly coloured in black and grey to represent the ashes of the phoenix. Contrastingly, its eyes are blue and shine like sapphires. Whereas the lilac and other ethereal playful colours are associated with the rising sun and fire, illuminating in the sky. Everything we have created in this collection is emphatically elegant and impeccably designed so that it looks like it would feel delightful to wear and to walk in.

Backstage at Atelier Zuhra’s LFW 2020 show. Image by Daniel John Cotton @cottonphotographer

4. How are your designs influenced by your cultural heritage?

Middle Eastern culture has definitely been a source of inspiration for all of our creations. Being born and brought up here [in Oman], I have grown up as a part of this beautiful culture, and knowingly or unknowingly it is somehow reflected in my designs. I would say the Middle Eastern influences are most recognisable in the silhouettes that we work with.

Atelier Zuhra LFW 2020. Image by Image by Daniel John Cotton @cottonphotographer

5. When you’re dressing down, what’s your go to outfit?

My personal style is very classic and chic.

6. Who would be your dream to dress for the red carpet?

Angelina Jolie, Blake Lively, the Kardashians and Scarlett Johansson.

Discover the collections: atelier-zuhra.com

Flow Diptych, Part 2 of 2 by Vik Muniz, for the 2019 Ruinart Carte Blanche commission and installed at the Ruinart Art Bar at Frieze London 2019

Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz has responded to Ruinart’s Carte Blanche commission by going back to the roots

“A photograph marks a moment in time,” says Vik Muniz. We sit surrounded by his latest photographic series, ‘Shared Roots’, in the Ruinart champagne bar at the 2019 Frieze London. “One way or another, everything fades and everything ceases to be. Photography is one way for you to hold on a little longer.”

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The Brazilian-born artist is fascinated by the fragile materiality of photography. “Visual technology broke a membrane, and the image became autonomous from any material relationship,” he says. “Our relationship to facts is getting more and more problematic. The idea of information, the idea of representation, is completely disconnected from tangibility, from facts. Psychologically, that has an effect. And, I chose to go in the opposite direction and make things that we have not lost. They require physical presence, they are heavy, even though they’re photographs.” The photographs around us are rooted in this physicality. Muniz used wood and charcoal to create temporary sculptures of hands clutching gnarled vines, captured in overexposed, grainy monochrome. “There is an architecture when you make art,” he says, “I find it quite pyramidal. The base of it has to be optical, haptic, sensory, perceptual. You have to have a physical reaction to it.”

Find out more: ruinart.com

This article was originally published in Spring 2020 Issue.

Cara Delevinge stars the ‘Oui’ collection campaign for Dior Joaillerie

Dior Jewellery’s Creative Director Victoire de Castellane continues to take inspiration from the language of love for the brand’s latest additions to the Oui collection. Chloe Frost Smith reports

Simple in sentiment and design, the latest additions to the iconic Dior Oui collection continue Victoire de Castellane’s tribute to the maison’s couture with two new romantic French phrases – Je t’aime and Toi moi – adorning a series of rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

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The Toi moi earrings

Available in white, pink, and yellow gold, the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’ are dotted with solitaire diamonds in a whimsical handwritten font reminiscent of the signature Christian Dior stitching. The Je t’aime ring stretches across two adjacent fingers, whilst the Toi moi ring comprises two separate bands for each word. For an asymmetrical look, the Je t’aime and Toi moi earrings are made up of one word per piercing, allowing the wearer to mix and match.

The Je t’aime ring from Dior Jewellery’s Oui collection

The delicate necklaces and bracelets lend well to layering, alongside the finely threaded rings which can be stacked together with multiple messages on each finger. Whether combined or worn separately, the pieces make for an elegant statement accessory.

View the collection: dior.com

Shirin Neshat at home in New York City

Shirin Neshat’s devastatingly striking art combines dream, reality and an undercurrent of anger and sadness. As a major retrospective of her work is held in Los Angeles, Millie Walton meets the artist at the launch of her collaboration with celebrated Italian winemaker Ornellaia, famous for its artist labels

Portrait photography of Shirin Neshat at home in New York by Maryam Eisler

Iranian-born filmmaker and artist Shirin Neshat sits demurely drinking a cup of coffee in the palatial breakfast room at Baglioni Hotel Luna in Venice. It’s the morning after the Sotheby’s auction at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection which saw the sale of limited-edition bottles of 2016 Ornellaia wine with Neshat’s label artwork. A total of $312,000 was raised, with all profits going to the Mind’s Eye programme, which was conceived by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to help blind people experience art through the use of other senses.

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The success of Neshat’s collaboration, following that of William Kentridge’s in 2018, was well deserving of late-night celebrations, but the artist is composed and alert, her jet-black hair scraped tightly back from her face, and her dark eyes lined with black kohl. It’s a look that would seem somewhat severe or even theatrical on most, but Neshat wears it with authenticity, grace and a sense of homeliness. She pulls up another chair close to hers so that I can hear what she’s saying over the clamour of the breakfast buffet and tells me that she’s been ordering coffee to her room each morning and is worried that Ornellaia will have to foot the bill. Given the sum raised last night along with Neshat’s status as the world’s most important and widely recognised contemporary Iranian artist, it’s hard not to laugh, but she speaks softly and sincerely, taking time to consider each of her answers and apologising when yet another admirer interrupts for an autograph. She has a lot of fans it seems, yet her politically engaged work continues to generate debate. She admits, “Some people dislike what I do. There are a lot of people who hate my work in Iran, but still it is discussed, so I think I’m relevant.”

Here and above: stills from Neshat’s video Rapture (1999)

Neshat was born in the city of Qazvin, north-west of Tehran, but left for California at the age of 17 to finish her schooling. Her training as an artist began with her undergraduate and masters degrees in fine art at the University of California, Berkeley. However, she abandoned art-making and moved from Los Angeles to New York in the early 1980s. It was a decade later, through photography first and then film, that she found her artistic vision. She has now been working as an artist for more than 30 years and has won numerous international awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1999 edition of the Venice Biennale for her powerful short film Turbluent, which explores gender roles and social restrictions in Iranian culture. The film plays out on two screens: one shows a male performer singing a love song by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi to a large audience of men, whilst on the other screen, a veiled woman waits in an empty auditorium, her back turned to the camera. When the man’s performance finishes, the woman begins a wordless song of guttural cries, mournful melodies, panting and animalistic screeching. This film was not only significant in establishing Neshat’s career, but also in paving the way for her succeeding works, which all, in one way or another, deal with the restrictions of female experience. Though embedded in narratives of conflict, Neshat’s work offers a sense of hope in which women find freedom through art in all its various guises.

Neshat’s designs for Ornellaia’s ‘La Tensione’ bottle label

Neshat with Ornellaia’s estate director Axel Heinz

Given these preoccupations, the artist’s decision to collaborate with Tuscan winemaker Ornellaia is somewhat baffling. “In our culture, wine is a way not to escape, but to transcend reality and so [drinking wine] is a sacred, spiritual act,” says Neshat. “But in general, I feel like an occasional step out of your own milieu is actually very positive. For one thing, it puts your work in front of a new audience, but also, for me, [commercial work] is an attractive way of financing my projects. I make work that takes me six years and I make zero money so I think that any patronage that finances your practice and gives you the freedom to do your work is great.” Her series of images for Ornellaia, interpreting the theme ‘La Tensione’ which gives this vintage its name, depict white hands inscribed with Persian script, luminous against a black background. The use of hands, along with literature and monochromatic shades are all typical of Neshat’s aesthetic and imbue the work with a haunting, dreamlike quality. “I’m very interested in the subtlety of body postures and how they can reveal emotion, especially coming from the Islamic tradition and how provocative and problematic the body can be,” she says. “There’s a certain universality about hand gestures.” She places one palm against her chest: “This, for example, could be love”.

Ibrahim (Patriots) from The Book of Kings series (2012) by Shirin Neshat

The work is reminiscent of Neshat’s first series of black-and-white photographs, entitled Women of Allah (1993–97), which was created following the artist’s return to Iran in 1990, her first visit following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. When Neshat arrived back in Iran, it was in the wake of dramatic cultural changes. Women of Allah not only marked the rebirth of her making art, but also her engagement with the country’s political landscape – an engagement which led to her current state of exile. The series focuses on female martyrdom, showing veiled women holding weapons, their faces, hands and feet again inscribed with Farsi poetry, highlighting the revolutionary Iranians’ dual identities as both Persians and radical Islamists, as well as the tension between devotion and violence.

Read more: Introducing the next generation of filmmakers at Frieze LA

Her practice continues to be preoccupied with contrasts, highlighted by the minimalism of black and white, but also with conflict. “There are plenty of artists whose making of art is an aesthetic exercise, which is important because it has intellectual and artistic values of the highest level,” she explains. “But for artists born to a country like Iran, the relationship to art is personal in a way that it cannot be separated from daily realities. I don’t think we have the emotional capability of distancing ourselves from these issues, and it is an incredibly fulfilling process when you make work that is politically conscious. It also means that you have a relationship with an audience that is larger than the [usual] art audience because people are able to identify with the subject matter.”

Despite Neshat’s acute political engagement, her work has a sense of timelessness achieved by incorporating literature and music as well as elements of the surreal. “Music is very existential,” she says. “It sort of neutralizes a political reality, but it also contains all these cultural references and has a strong physical impact. Powerful music affects your heart.” This is perhaps most apparent in Turbulent, which was inspired by a young blind woman who Neshat saw singing on the streets of Istanbul. Many of her works have involved collaborations with composers and musicians as well as writers and cinematographers. “It’s an essential part of my work to collaborate, especially with people who know me and my work well,” she says. “I’m doing a lot of work in media that I never studied. It’s been really interesting to surround myself with people who have the expertise.”

The artist in her studio

Neshat’s artistic ‘family’ is international, but she has gravitated towards other Iranians in New York: “I am sitting on the outside [of Iranian culture], others are by choice and others not; either way, we’re naturally drawn to each other and spend a lot of time helping each other. I do feel integrated in American culture as far as the artwork goes, but I can also see the limitations of not being Western, when your practice is considered to be a little bit outside the box.” Reflecting this duality, Neshat curated ‘A Bridge Between You and Everything’, an exhibition of Iranian women artists held at the High Line Nine Galleries in New York in November 2019.

Raven Brewer-Beltz (2019) by Shirin Neshat

Neshat has called New York her home for many years, but her latest project, Land of Dreams, is the first time that she has directly turned her artistic attention towards the US. The project explores her experiences of being an immigrant, focusing on an Iranian woman who collects dreams that portray American people and takes them back to an Iranian colony for analysis. The project is now being shown for the first time as part of Neshat’s major retrospective ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again’ at The Broad in LA, and one wonders at the colony’s interpretations. “It’s kind of an absurd comedy,” she laughs, “but it was also [about] how to tackle a very important political subject – the antagonism between the two cultures as well as the corruption on both sides – through a human surrealism so that it escapes absolute realism. I want it to be timely, but I don’t want it to have no value in a hundred years’ time.” Are these surreal imaginings ever drawn from Neshat’s own dreams? “Yes, I try to write down my dreams every time I wake up. I like how ephemeral dreams are. My work is like the story that comes after.”

‘Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again’ is on show at The Broad, Los Angeles until 16 February 2020: thebroad.org.

Shirin Neshat ‘Land of Dreams’ opens at the Goodman Gallery in London on 20 February and will run until 28 March 2020. For more information visit: goodman-gallery.com

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.

Construction view of Los Angeles Water School (LAWS) (2018) by Oscar Tuazon

Artists have long explored themes of environmental sustainability in Southern California, but a recent series of devastating wildfires has brought even greater resonance to their work. Evan Moffitt explores how four LA artists are changing the way we think about climate change

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When the Getty Fire tore up the dry hills of Mandeville Canyon in October 2019, many in Los Angeles feared the worst: the Getty Center’s Titian and Thomas Gainsborough paintings curling from their frames, masterworks of European art reduced to cinders. This wasn’t the first time locals had imagined such a catastrophe – Ed Ruscha had painted his iconoclastic portrait of the county museum, The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire, in 1968 – but this time, it was different. The severity and frequency of wildfires had increased as climate change accelerated, threatening not just art in Southern California but the very way of life there.

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Scientists, furthermore, have warned that the city could eventually run dry, and nothing has shaped LA more than its lack of water. The Department of Water and Power was long seen as the most powerful bureau of city government, dating back to when William Mulholland drained the Owens Valley in 1913 to soak the dry fields of San Fernando. The violent conflict that ensued was famously fictionalized in the 1974 film Chinatown, and many artists have explored the city’s relationship with water, from Judy Baca’s epic mural along the Tujunga Wash, The Great Wall of Los Angeles (1974–84), to more recent projects by artists such as Carolina Caycedo and Oscar Tuazon.

This work can be difficult, but it has struck an important nerve. “Most of our patrons are museums or their supporters who want to engage in dialogue with challenging contemporary art,” says Kibum Kim of Commonwealth and Council, the gallery that represents Caycedo. “They don’t want something that is easy.” For Caycedo, this has led to being included in shows at major institutions such as the Hammer Museum in LA, as well as having works in a number of private collections. Artists such as her are a reminder that Southern California has always been a place where artists, writers, filmmakers and others have mobilized around difficult issues, mining the past to build a better future.

Wagon Station encampment at A-Z West (2004) by Andrea Zittel

No one embodies the utopian spirit of LA more than Andrea Zittel. In 2000, the artist left a burgeoning career in New York for a ramshackle bungalow on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park. She began slowly expanding her compound in the desert, informed, in part, by the Bauhaus, Japanese architecture, minimalist sculpture and architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. A-Z West, as the 60-acre campus is known, encompasses Zittel’s home and studio, guest cabins, outdoor sculptural installations, informal classrooms and a series of Wagon Stations, tiny chrome sleeping pods nestled between boulders like UFOs.

Read more: Picasso Through the Lens of David Douglas Duncan at Hauser & Wirth in Gstaad

Zittel refers to A-Z West as “an evolving testing ground for living – a place in which space, objects, and acts of living all intertwine in a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today.” In part, this means creative, sustainable approaches to the privations of living in the desert. Zittel pulps her paper waste and sets it to dry in metal trays called the Regenerating Field; she uses the results to make sculptures. Vegetables grow from barrels shrouded by mosquito netting in a courtyard formed by shipping containers. Shade is provided by trees watered using dry irrigation techniques.

Installation view of ‘Rafa Esparza: Staring at the Sun’ at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019

What ecological problems might be solved by building better? Like A-Z West, Oscar Tuazon poses this question with his Water School (2016). Its central component, Zome Alloy (2016), borrows its bubble-like plywood structure from the waste-free dome homes designed in the 1960s by Steve Baer, the inventor of passive solar technology. Tuazon’s project also refers to another LA visionary, the architect Buckminster Fuller, best known for his transparent geodesic greenhouses and light-filled homes. When Zome Alloy was recently on view in the Chicago Architecture Biennial, visitors could browse a small library of books about water rights and convene for bimonthly discussions.

Read more: Gaggenau’s head of design Sven Baacke on the meaning of luxury

For several years, Caycedo has explored the effects of colonialism and industrialization on water resources throughout Latin America with her ongoing project ‘BE DAMMED’. At the 2016 São Paulo Biennial, four enormous satellite images of controversial Brazilian dams revealed the structures’ disastrous effects on the surrounding landscape. Caycedo hung brightly colored sculptures woven from fishing nets, which she calls Cosmotarrayas, mesmerizing mobiles linking the precariousness of marine resources to the over-fishing that threatens the life within them. “There’s been great demand for Carolina’s Cosmotarrayas, which have immediate visual power,” says Kim. “They’re colorful, and they play into generally accepted ideas about sculptural composition and form. But they also carry a powerful message.” Caycedo says she doesn’t believe in sustainability, per se: “Extraction will never be sustainable. A coal mine is not sustainable. The way we use our water is not sustainable. I prefer to think about ‘sustenance’ in terms of my work and a healthier relationship to nature: to give strength to something you care about or someone you love.”

Installation view of ‘Wanaawna, Rio Hondo, and Other Spirits’ (2019) by Carolina Caycedo at Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA

In 2014, artist Rafa Esparza began making adobe bricks from mud he harvested on the banks of the Los Angeles River, on a parcel of land known as the Bowtie – one of the only sections of the river left unpaved by the Army Corps of Engineers when they buried the channel in concrete in 1936. In 2014 the artist Michael Parker had carved a 42m obelisk into the earth that Esparza covered with approximately 1,400 of his bricks. During the installation’s closing performance, he donned a traditional Aztec loincloth, pheasant headdress and ankle rattles and performed a dance atop the structure that referred both to his ancestral people and the indigenous Tongva displaced from the river’s edge by colonialism. Adobe and thatch are among the most sustainable building practices on earth, but the indigenous people who used them were killed or forced from their land, which was then torn up to build LA. Esparza has since repurposed his bricks for shows, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in what he refers to as “browning the white cube”.

This has had its challenges, according to Kim, who represents Esparza: “Adobe is very structurally strong, but it’s not archival; it will deteriorate over time, which can be hard for some collectors and institutions to accept. But that’s an important element of Rafa’s work: we need to re-conceive our notion of art as a static thing that will forever remain the same.” By imagining cities like LA and their museums made of mud and river water, Esparza places the environmental costs of colonialism into stark relief, proposing, if not a return to a precolonial past, at least a few important lessons we might learn from.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.

Ghetto Film School Roster brings together students and industry for a film competition screening and artist showcase of GFS alumni work, here at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, 2017

The inaugural Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award at 2020’s Frieze Los Angeles recognizes ten young filmmakers who have been nurtured by Ghetto Film School. Maisie Skidmore meets the storytellers behind the camera

DEUTSCHE BANK WEALTH MANAGEMENT x LUX

More than a century has elapsed since Paramount Pictures was established in Hollywood in 1913. Since then, the studio lot has grown somewhat, from the original 26 acres to no fewer than 65 today. The scene itself has altered entirely, with thousands of movies and television shows coming to fruition on its hallowed grounds.

The studio’s iconic logo, on the other hand, remains almost entirely unchanged. The snow-topped mountain-scape studded with an arc of 22 stars is one of the protagonists in the rich movie history of Los Angeles. It’s woven into the very fabric of the place; the city has grown up around it, producing writers, artists, filmmakers and plenty more. So, what better place than Paramount Pictures Studios to house Frieze Los Angeles, when the international art fair opened its inaugural edition in the city in February 2019?

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Non-profit organization Ghetto Film School has taken a similar trajectory to that of Frieze, in that it has opened its own LA outpost in recent times. GFS, as it is known, was first founded as a small after-school program in the South Bronx by former social worker Joe Hall some 20 years ago, with a view to introducing narrative filmmaking to youth programs in New York, particularly in low-income areas. “Ghetto Film School was founded on the premise of providing a robust, long-lasting platform for a new generation of storytellers, bridging the gap between in-class curriculum and hands-on experience in the entertainment industry,” explains Sharese Bullock-Bailey, its chief strategy and partnership officer. GFS has evolved exponentially, educating, developing and celebrating the next generation of great American storytellers. Since 2017 it has opened a third outpost, in London.

Ghetto Film School students filming in South Africa

Founder and president of the GFS, Joe Hall

In view of the long history of the film industry in Los Angeles, the city provided a natural second home for the organization in 2017. The GFS has continued to forge a pathway into the film industry and beyond for its students ever since. “There is so much more to GFS outside of fostering behind-the-camera filmmakers,” Bullock-Bailey continues. “Our partners, who provide GFS students with immeasurable support, have been key at introducing them to other related avenues within the creative world. Outside of filmmaking, our graduates have gone on to become advertising producers, writers, studio executives, and set designers.”

Now, the next generation of Los Angeles’s filmmaking talent is set to receive a further boost. In the summer of 2019, Frieze and Deutsche Bank launched the inaugural edition of the Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award, a new competition created in collaboration with Ghetto Film School. Ten aspiring and emerging filmmakers were offered a unique platform and an intensive four-month development program through which to produce their own short films, inspired by LA’s artistic, social and cultural landscape. The winning filmmaker, who receives an award of $10,000 at a ceremony in the Paramount Theatre during Frieze Los Angeles, is chosen by a panel of leading figures in contemporary art and entertainment. The award is showcased at the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge at the art fair, and its launch coincides with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Deutsche Bank Collection of art.

Read more: How Adrian Chen’s K11 MUSEA is changing Hong Kong’s cultural scene

Naturally, LA is a rich and fertile subject area for the students of the Fellows Program of the GFS to draw on. “The history of Los Angeles is built on the confluence of disparate visions for the city and its future, something that made the energy and community support at the first Frieze Los Angeles so palpable,” says Bettina Korek, the executive director of Frieze Los Angeles. “To be able to support these emerging local filmmakers in depicting our city’s current world, and showing how the medium of film has grown alongside it, is a privilege for us and our partners at the Paramount Theatre, Deutsche Bank and Ghetto Film School. I can’t wait to meet the Fellows and to see how they envision Los Angeles.” Thorsten Strauss, the Global Head of Art, Culture and Sports at Deutsche Bank, echoes her sentiment. “We are delighted to be working with Frieze and Ghetto Film School on this exciting new film award,” he says. “It’s a natural step in our ever-developing partnership with Frieze to start this project together and support emerging LA storytellers.”

Mya Dodson, a GFS alumna and below, Dodson at Film Independent’s GFS Shorts screening, LACMA in Los Angeles, 2016

The Fellows, whose own cultural heritage reaches far and wide, have turned to their respective experiences of the city for their films, and the breadth of their concepts reflects the extraordinary diversity inherent to LA. They looked to the recent plague of fires (in the case of Nabeer Khan), the ubiquity of smartphones (for Nicole Thompson), and the wrenching unease of a displacement from, and subsequent return to, their home (for Silvia Lara). In each case, poignantly, the school’s Fellows share a profound and at times all-consuming desire to tell their story. They also all seem to share a hope that, in so doing, they might carve out a space in which others are able to make their own voices heard too.

GFS’s alumni, who are now scattered throughout the film industry and beyond, are testament to the program’s effectiveness. “Ghetto Film School is more than a non-profit mission statement,” says Luis Servera, a writer and director who graduated from the program in 2004. “It is family.” Servera has been part of the organization for all of his adult life, he says, proudly witnessing and contributing to its rapid growth. “It’s a bit surreal, but not surprising at all. GFS is destined to be a significant and influential catalyst in all things media.”

The Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge at Frieze Los Angeles, 2019.

How has Ghetto Film School seen such success? “They understand the power of storytelling and the power of the storyteller, no matter what their background is,” Servera continues. “They also realize that education and opportunities to those with limited access are essential to cultivate and nurture unseen talent.” What’s more, he continues, given the current climate in the industry, the work GFS is doing has the potential to reverberate for decades to come. “In a time when trending words such as ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ seem to be at the forefront of keynotes and boardroom meetings, I find it curious that a small non-profit organization that started in the South Bronx is the solution to a problem that a massive industry is having.”

Read more: Francis Alÿs receives Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon Prize 2020

To see the short films that have been months in the making viewed and judged at a Frieze art fair – one of the core events in the art world – will, of course, be of no small moment for the young filmmakers. The Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award marks the first milestone in each of these storytellers’ own narratives; where and when the next one will be, we will just have to wait and watch.

THE 10 SHORTLISTED CANDIDATES

ALIMA LEE
“After watching Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, I had a dream about a portal that looked like an empty doorway appearing in different parts of the city. The portal allowed black and indigenous people to escape to a planet where they could be safe. I revisited this concept in my short film, to explore a story line about how a girl comes across this portal and about why she intends to use it.”

DANIELLE BOYD
“I was inspired by Shirin Neshat’s fearless ability to convey her feelings about being exiled from her home. I was also inspired by the colorful cultures in LA, and how they create the city’s identity. I was going to Africa for the first time and began feeling this sudden vacancy about my African American identity. I began to see more clearly how the miseducation of African Americans can affect us and the way we interpret our own history, and ourselves.”

MICHELLE KIM
“The idea for my short emerged from this mental process of recognizing what moved me about LA and what felt significant. I reverted back to my childhood and the places I’ve grown up in, such as the car wash near my dad’s work, the liquor store in the strip mall. These sites are as sacred to me as they are banal to others, and the intention behind my short is based on visually sanctifying these places.”

NABEER KHAN
“I knew that I had to make my film about the recent Los Angeles fires. I asked myself how these fires were starting. That question, combined with my interest in psychology, led me to the concept for my film. I wanted to explore the power of grief and its progression to rage. In this film, I seek to apply this idea to our relationship with nature and the ongoing destruction of our Earth.”

NICOLE THOMPSON
“The concept for this film came to me while riding a train through the city and seeing so many people wrapped up in their phones. I decided to tell a story about when a young boy is forced to move to LA and stay at his grandparent’s house for the summer. He tries to convince his mom to not leave him there, but she has to travel for work. Left with no friends, Wi-Fi, or games he explores the house, discovers a magical book, and goes on an adventure traveling through different dimensions.”

NOAH SELLMAN
“I was watching surreal YouTube videos and saw in one of them an animated dreamscape made of Coke products. I started to wonder if that was possible. When I moved to LA, I was struck by the branding that covers the city. There is barely a blank surface anywhere. It was a lot for someone from a small town. Watching Shirin Neshat’s shorts, I realized the dreams could be abstract. Then I knew I had an idea.”

TIMOTHY OFFOR
“Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever was the first time I saw characters that I knew – not physically, but in character. I knew people just like them. I’ve dreamed of sharing my stories with the world ever since. The idea for my film originated during a debate with a friend about fear. We were discussing whether people are afraid of success or failure. Through that I developed a concept centered on dreams, fear and our willingness or unwillingness to overcome it.”

TORYN SEABROOKS
“I love comedy and there is nothing funnier to me than an uncomfortable situation. When you’re trying to impress a person, you do things outside of your character and find yourself in the middle of cringeworthy moments. I wanted to tell this story to point out a darker truth I’ve grown to understand about idolatry within Hollywood, and what we’re willing to do to be accepted and seen by the people we admire.”

SILVIA LARA
“I’ve always wanted to see my city, Whittier in LA, portrayed the way I feel it deserves to be seen. I had lived elsewhere before but didn’t realize just how special it was until I up and moved across the country to New York and then returned. It contrasted so much that it made me appreciate aspects of this quiet suburb on the edge of LA. And it’s not as quiet as it seems.”

MYA DODSON
“The concept for my film came to me in a vision while visiting family in Korea earlier this year. My sister had recently encouraged me to ‘move in love, not in fear’ – a motto that set the tone for my entire year. I was listening to frequencies when an affirmation came over me, and thus, Cosmic Affirmation was born. I saw the film as a representation of how I’m overcoming fear in love.”

THE JURY

Doug Aitken, contemporary LA-based artist
Claudio de Sanctis, Global Head of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management
Shari Frilot, Chief Curator, New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival
Jeremy Kagan, director, writer, producer and professor
Bettina Korek, Director of Frieze Los Angeles
Thorsten Strauss, Global Head of Deutsche Bank Art, Culture & Sports
Sam Taylor-Johnson, artist and film director
Hamza Walker, Director of LAXart

Find out more: ghettofilm.org

This article was originally published in the Spring Issue 2020.

Picasso and ceramic (owl) by David Douglas Duncan (Spring 1957), Villa La Californie, Cannes © David Douglas Duncan © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2019. Courtesy the estate David Douglas Duncan

For a special exhibition at Vieux Chalet in Gstaad, Hauser & Wirth brings together ceramics and paintings by Picasso alongside a series of portrait photographs by David Duncan Douglas to provide a fascinating exploration of creativity, intimacy and space.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Duncan himself was a renowned war photographer and photojournalist, who first encountered Picasso in 1956 when he  infamously rang the doorbell of La Californie, the artist’s home in Cannes. At the time, Picasso was in the bathtub and allowed Duncan to photograph him right then and there, leading onto a lasting friendship which granted the photographer unprecedented access into the artist’s creative processes. Over the course of seventeen years, Duncan took approximately 25,000 images of Picasso, documenting not just Picasso himself, but also his family and friends.

Battle between Claude and his father wearing Gary Cooper’s cowboy hat by David Douglas Duncan, July 1957, Villa La Californie, Cannes © David Douglas Duncan © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2019. Courtesy the estate David Douglas Duncan

Pablo Picasso with the portrait Jacqueline à l’écharpe noire (1954) by David Douglas Duncan, 1957, Villa La Californie, Cannes © David Douglas Duncan © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2019. Courtesy the estate David Douglas Duncan

Duncan’s photographs and Picasso’s artworks are displayed side by side throughout the domestic spaces of the chalet, emphasising the intimacy of the photographic perspective as well as the connection between the two distinct artistic mediums. In some of the images, Picasso is seen actively engaging with the lens whilst others are more candid, showing the artist amongst his easels, books, brushes and paints.

Read more: How Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar aims to inspire change

Bearded man’s head (1948) by Pablo Picasso © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2019Courtesy Succession Picasso

The artist’s ceramics are amongst the most captivating works on display, as everyday objects such as bowls and vases are transformed into animal-like creatures through warped swollen shapes and dynamic painted lines. Seen alongside Duncan’s photographs, Picasso’s creative energy becomes even more palpable as does the friendship between the two artists caught in subtle gestures and glances.

‘Picasso Through the Lens of David Douglas Duncan’ runs until 28 February 2020 at Le Vieux Chalet in Gstaad. For more information visit: hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/26682-pablo-picasso-lens-david-douglas-duncan

The Gaggenau stand at the EuroCucina 2018 exhibition

Stephen Bayley

Of all rooms in the house, kitchens demand the best design for function as well as looks. Cultural critic Stephen Bayley reveals their modernist origins and meets kitchen appliance-maker Gaggenau’s head of design Sven Baacke to talk about his design thinking, what luxury means and the poetry of fridges

No-one is ever going to want a virtual dinner. The one thing electrons, sensors, code, AI, VR and haptics will never provide is a perfectly executed, steaming hot perdiz estofada Casa Paco, a Madrileño classic with fumes of wine, garlic, onions and bacon, garnished by an improbably big handful of parsley. Not to forget its ideal companion, a perfectly chilled 2016 Finca Allende white from Rioja.

For this reason, the domestic kitchen with its hob, oven and fridge will always remain a part of civilised life. App-driven delivery services may flourish on their wobbly bicycles, but they have more effect on the precarious margins of the traditional restaurant trade than the home cook with his gastronomic library, bleu de travail pinafore and wooden spoon.

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Despite changing behaviour – going out, staying in, hot yoga, crazy exercise regimes, fasting and peculiar diets – the kitchen is a remarkably resilient feature of building design. Although some experts estimate that New Yorkers spend 130 per cent more on eating out than other Americans, the fact remains that every new apartment in Manhattan is still equipped with an impressive new kitchen.

Gaggenau’s head of design Sven Baacke

And that probably means a new German kitchen. Like the German car, the German kitchen has reached a global archetypal status that Carl Gustav Jung would have appreciated and understood. Never mind that the same new German kitchen in that vertiginously tall apartment building on East 57th street is rarely used and never contaminated with actual hot food, it is a powerful and universally understood status symbol. Why? Because the design and manufacture of a kitchen and its equipment combine the disciplines of architecture and industrial design at which, at least in the modern era, Germans have so excelled.

It was in 1926 that Grete Schütte-Lihotzky unveiled her Frankfurt Kitchen, a functionalist masterpiece designed for that city’s ambitious socialist housing programme. Exploiting industrial processes and materials, it was tiny, ergonomic, modular, intelligent. It was everything the Bauhaus claimed but often failed to achieve.

The Vario 400 refrigerator

True, the American dream kitchen, with its pastel-coloured and chrome-plated laboursaving appliances attended by a blonde model in a flared and pleated A-line skirt, presented consumers with an alternative in the 1950s and 1960s, but the Frankfurt Kitchen set the enduring design standard. So much so, that examples are in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Frankfurt Kitchen from the 1920s

In a nicely paradoxical way, this austere design language has become the ultimate luxury product. This is because luxury today is not about excess or vulgarity, but of having time to spare for, among other things, cooking.

Now, I want you to imagine Sven Baacke riding his adored 1962 Lambretta scooter, a machine he enjoys dismantling and reassembling, around Munich. Baacke is the Gaggenau designer. He was born in 1974 and attended the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart.

This is an inspirational city for a design education. At the beginning of the last century, the local museologist Gustav Pazaurek organised an influential exhibition called ‘Geschmacksverirrungen im Kunstgewerbe’ (Errors of Taste in Design). Pazaurek hated fuss and admired logic. And in 1927, the great Mies van der Rohe participated in Stuttgart’s magnificent Weissenhofsiedlung, or Weissenhof Estate, a real-life demonstration of architectural possibilities embodied by the International style.

Today, Baacke says his favourite building is Mies’s pavilion built for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. And, of course, Stuttgart is the city of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, with all the industrial discipline and design prowess that suggests. And if Baacke’s new home is Munich, remember this is the territory of BMW, a company that made its reputation through design as much as through automatic self-levelling suspension.

All these architectural and design influences I think can be seen in Gaggenau, but I wanted to check this thought with Sven Baacke. So, I asked him.

Stephen Bayley: Is there such a thing as ‘German Design’?
Sven Baacke: Of course. We have the Bauhaus. And Gaggenau has been in the Black Forest for more than three hundred years. There’s nothing more German than the Black Forest! But at Gaggenau, while we certainly admire precision, we have soul as well. That’s not something you’d dare admit to a German engineer!

The Weissenhofsiedlung, designed by Mies van der Rohe, 1927

Stephen Bayley: What’s your approach ?
Sven Baacke: I reduce everything to the essentials, but do not remove the poetry. To me, a fridge is architecture. There are so many variables involved, so many different criteria. But everything comes together in a well-balanced kitchen. One thing is certain – I like open spaces, not closed doors.

Stephen Bayley: How do you define luxury?
Sven Baacke: Luxury is not so much about owning things. I don’t like to talk about Gaggenau as a luxury brand. In any case, luxury is culturally determined. If you live in a Chinese city, the ultimate luxury is fresh air. In Tokyo, it is space. For us Europeans, luxury is a personal thing. It is subtle. It is personal. It is about experience. And especially the experience of cooking, taking time to buy ingredients and spending time with friends.

Stephen Bayley: And are you a good cook?
Sven Baacke: Ah, but what is ‘good’? Certainly, I do not like baking because it is all about chemistry. I prefer to be intuitive. I love being in Sicily because the produce is so good that you hardly need to change it.

A Gaggenau wine cabinet at the EuroCucina exhibition

A Gaggenau kitchen design incorporating a Vario 400 series oven

Stephen Bayley: So, would you agree with [cookery writer] Marcella Hazan when she said, “I don’t
measure, I cook”?
Sven Baacke: Yes!

Stephen Bayley: Does good design last forever?
Sven Baacke: Yes. I admire Apple, but a first-generation iPhone is now obsolete. Our 90cm oven has been on the market since the eighties. It’s an investment, not an indulgence!

Stephen Bayley: Where do you find inspiration?
Sven Baacke: I like the oak cutting-board I recently bought at Margaret Howell in London. And I have just bought an electric Audi, but I also want to buy an old Porsche Targa or an original 1959 Mini. I am in love with combustion engines, but this is not a technology that’s going to get us to the next generation.

Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion

Stephen Bayley: What about the Frankfurt Kitchen?
Sven Baacke: My grandma had something like it. Very German. But its successor was Otl Aicher’s book Die Küche zum Kochen (The Kitchen is for Cooking) which inspired me at college. Aicher was the designer who gave BMW and Lufthansa graphics their amazing clarity.

Stephen Bayley: What new technologies will influence cooking in the future?
Sven Baacke: Revolutions are very rare. Cooking will always be an analogue activity. Look – we are not going to the moon, so I think future improvements will come from better manufacturing. And from a better understanding of how, for instance, we can make cleaning easier. Perhaps we will be able to make equipment disappear from view when not in-use.

Stephen Bayley: You have ten designers working at Gaggenau. What do you tell them?
Sven Baacke: Well, you have heard of forecasting. We have this intellectual game I call ‘back-casting’. I ask my designers to jump into the distant future and then jump back to the near future. And, with the jumping concluded, we both firmly agreed that the idea of wanting to save time in the kitchen was ridiculous, because wherever else would you ever want to be other than in a well-designed kitchen?

Find out more: gaggenau.com/gb

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.

The gallery’s founder Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar in front of a painting by Farzad Kohan in the exhibition ‘Human Being, Being Human’

Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar, a new gallery in the heart of Monaco, celebrates its opening with an exhibition of works by Iranian-American artist Farzad Kohan, but it is no ordinary commercial enterprise, as Rebecca Anne Proctor discovers

A visit to Monte Carlo is like stepping inside a gallery filled with glistening works of art. The picturesque town, with its expansive sea views, its numerous neatly landscaped gardens, countless restaurants, luxury boutiques and cultural institutions, continues to fuse its regal past with its new contemporary character.90

Entering this mix of glamour and culture is a new art gallery, Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar, which opened its doors in December 2019. Named after its founder, the art collector and wife of artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, the gallery is dedicated to contemporary and modern art and highlighting works by established and emerging international artists.

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While the Behnam-Bakhtiars are known for their support of the Iranian art scene, particularly through the Fondation Behnam-Bakhtiar, where Maria holds the role of curator of the permanent collection, Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar will not limit its exhibitions or roster of artists to any particular culture or nationality. “The nationality of an artist is not what is important; what is crucial is the art and what the artist is trying to say. My mission is to show established and emerging artists from all over the world,” Maria says. The art and objects on show will be specially curated and exclusive to the gallery.

Located close to the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco at the Villa Sauber and to the Grimaldi Forum (which hosts the annual artmonte-carlo art fair), the gallery has placed itself at the heart of the city’s art centre. “Monaco is such a great place for art and culture,” says Maria. “Moreover, here in Monaco we have a wonderful group of collectors, some based locally and others who return regularly. We aim to add a new and exciting dimension to the Monaco art scene with our diverse programming.”

Installation shot of Farzad Kohan’s exhibition ‘Human Being, Being Human’ at Galerie Behnam-Bakhtiar in Monaco

Monaco offers a particular segment to the European art market. “It boasts highly influential residents and visitors who provide the perfect platform and exposure for our artists,” adds Maria. “And, for generations, the Prince’s family in addition to the government of Monaco have been great supporters of the arts.” Anyone who knows the city will be familiar with its buzzing social life, its numerous galas, operas, ballets and art exhibitions. “It’s wonderful that we will now be a part of this exciting agenda,” adds Maria. “It’s a place where you can really foster connections.”

Read more: Audemars Piguet’s Olivia Giuntini on art and women’s watches

Maria has been on the international art scene since 2009, firstly through the Fondation Behnam-Bakhtiar, established to promote emerging and established Iranian artists, and secondly as a collector. “I have been collecting art and supporting artists for a long time and this gallery is a way for me to further solidify my love of art,” says Maria, who has also hosted multiple non-profit functions in support of the arts in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. “I do what I do out of love,” she adds. “A gallery, like an artwork, is born of passion and dedication.”

The gallery will stage five to six exhibitions per year with, she says, “no specific geographic focus”. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition is ‘Human Being, Being Human’, by Los Angeles-based Iranian-American artist Farzad Kohan. The works on show, with their vibrant palette and meticulously drawn abstract lines, explore a segment of human experience, one marked by positive affirmations. “Farzad’s work was so important for us to start with because of the universal themes he addresses,” states Maria. “His paintings go beyond national and cultural boundaries. He speaks about love, kindness and humanity – themes that touch everyone from all walks of life.”

One of the paintings by Farzad Kohan’s in the exhibition ‘Human Being, Being Human’

The works exhibited in ‘Human Being, Being Human’ are being seen for the first time at the gallery. In one painting, replete with numerous thin lines, Kohan has written in his signature style the phrase “I have the power”. While at first this might appear boastful, when the viewer looks at the title of the work, To Change, they might think otherwise. “The way one perceives Farzad’s paintings is left up to the viewer’s own perspective,” Maria explains. In another painting. the word “everyday” is repeated, prompting the beholder to focus on the meaning of each instance. Then, as in the former work, one can see the title of the painting: Thankful. Indeed, gratitude for the everyday and for everything in life is a vital component to living a more compassionate existence. “I am a big fan of positive thinking and energy and I think it’s so wonderful to have a work in your home that offers positivity through beauty,” notes Maria.

Kohan’s work places an emphasis on form and material allowing for a reflection on the accumulation of various parts that make up a whole. For Kohan, art creation is akin to the diasporic experience, with which the artist, born in Tehran and now living in LA, is familiar. All stages, materials and processes, like all chapters in life, are part of a larger work and greater vision for the artist. In addition to his paintings, Kohan also makes installations and works on paper, particularly ink drawings.

Read more: Meet Russian style and fitness guru Polina Kitsenko

“He has developed signature techniques which he applies so skilfully to his multi-layered paintings,” says Maria. “I really connected to his ‘Human Being, Being Human’ series, where each painting is poetic, sentimental and beautiful not only visually but above all in its message. To me these works are brilliant because they incorporate various affirmations in the shape of an artwork.”.” Another facet of Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar’s activity is publishing. “Being a true bibliophile, one of the most exciting aspects of launching the gallery is the fact that we will run our own publishing house to produce books and catalogues to accompany our exhibitions.” This, in turn, Maria hopes, will open the door for dialogues between the gallery, its artists, curators, writers and of course, readers and visitors.

The goal of the gallery, as Maria states, is to give back to the larger community. “I want the gallery to serve as a platform that inspires change and highlights the importance of social responsibility,” says Maria. “For every exhibition, we donate a portion of the proceeds to a selected organisation that makes this world a better place.”

While the gallery is in essence commercial, its aims are higher. “One of the main reasons I love art is for its educational side. I appreciate surprising angles, different views and the diversity that art offers in its subjects and many explorations,” she adds. Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar, like the artworks it chooses to exhibit, offers an artistic and peaceful space in the heart of busy Monaco – a brief escape through art from the chaos of modern life.

‘Human Being, Being Human’ by Farzad Kohan runs until 4 March 2020. For more information visit: mariabehnambakhtiar.com

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.

Dinner hosted by the owners of Château Mouton Rothschild at the Palace of Versailles. Image by Leif Carlsson

The Palace of Versailles hosted one of its most opulent evenings since the times of Louis XVI, as the owners of Château Mouton Rothschild invited guests, including royalty, winners of some very special auction wines and LUX, to an evening of music and cuisine catered personally by Alain Ducasse. All in aid of the Palace’s restoration fund

Guests at the Versailles Celebration Gala Dinner, including (see below image) Catherine Pégard, Prince Albert II Monaco, Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, Camille Sereys de Rothschild, and Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, enjoyed a menu created with the personal oversight of Alain Ducasse, accompanied by legendary vintages of Mouton Rothschild, including the celebrated 1982 and near-mythical 1945, direct from the estate’s cellars.

For more information visit: chateau-mouton-rothschild.com/ chateauversailles.fr/

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.