Illustration Artist Mitja Bokun

Chen Fei likes to paint bad taste. He believes the not-so-pretty things leave a longer lasting impression than beauty ever would. What impresses him most are the rogues, not the upstanding citizens. He was trained at the Beijing Film Academy, found the industry too limiting, and turned to acrylic on canvas instead — treating every painting like a film still, rendered with photographic precision that reads as digital or animated until you get close. He was at Centre Pompidou in 2024. Galerie Perrotin represents him. He is not yet a household name outside contemporary art circles. That is the point.

Caroline Tomlinson spent 15 years as a designer and art director before making the shift she'd been circling for years — full-time fashion illustration. Central Saint Martins graduate, collaborator with Rankin, Dior and Louboutin, and a committed believer in happy accidents. This is a conversation about lines, marks, and what it means to let the ink lead.

She watched her grandmother weave in Turkey. Then she put rubber tubing and acrylic dowels through the same loom. Desire Moheb-Zandi — Berlin-born, Istanbul-raised, New York-marching — on textile art as feminist statement, the loom as analogue computer, and why we need activists more than ever.

Leila Antakly interviews Wilhelmina international model and scholar Samira Mahboub on culture change and cross-cultural communications.

In the early 2000s, Dubai's contemporary art scene was not a given. It was a possibility waiting for a catalyst. Sunny Rahbar became that catalyst. She built audience before she built sales. She hosted film screenings and talks and club nights before she went to Frieze. She defended artists who had no gallery representation and watched them grow into artists shown in every significant Western institution. An Arabic name on a Western gallery's roster is no longer unusual. She is one of the reasons why.

Paula Mendoza was a journalist before she was a goldsmith. One course changed everything: Jewelry as Sculpture, at Washington's Corcoran School of the Arts. A pilgrimage through Peru's ancient filigree workshops did the rest. Today her pieces are worn by Beyonce, Zendaya, and Sarah Jessica Parker, her artisans in Bogota have worked with her for over a decade, and her wedding in 2026 had a dress code of all black, a lineup of five DJs from Burning Man, and a theme called Rave Royale. She is, as Leila says, something special.