My practice is dedicated to investigating the cultural significance of various signs and symbols. My appreciation for and fascination with iconography shapes the majority of the conceptual and formal concerns within my practice. The Infinity Flower motif, which is the basis for my MaxMara design, is a floral print with a deeper meaning. Cut flowers, with their temporal beauty and fragility, are symbolic of the corporeal human condition. The Infinity Flower is akin to a natural perennial that blooms year after year, surviving the elements, returning to its origin state. This design reminds us all that our transformation lies within our roots and outside of our form. The stamping process for this wearable artwork is inspired by ancient dying technique of batik.
Tschabalala Self (b.1990 Harlem, New York) lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York. Self is an artist who builds a singular style from the syncretic use of painting, printmaking and sculpture to explore ideas surrounding figuration. She constructs depictions of predominantly women using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self’s work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2024); Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); Performa 2021 Biennial, New York City (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021); ICA, Boston (2020); among others. Self’s work is included in collections such as Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, USA; Consortium Museum, Dijon, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; ICA Boston, Boston, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA; New Museum, New York, USA; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Stedelijk Museum Collection, Amsterdam,
Victoria Kosheleva was born in 1989 in Moscow, Russia, and currently lives and works in Paris, France and Pietrasanta, Italy. Kosheleva is a contemporary artist whose practice synthesizes classical oil painting on canvas, lithography, and digital aesthetics, forming a unique visual language. Her work can be described as “cyber-expressionism,” where the materiality of the canvas merges with the ephemerality of the digital era. Kosheleva explores the phenomenon of the unconscious through the lens of symbolism and the philosophy of perception. In her works, reality is transformed, creating multilayered spaces where decontextualized images acquire new meanings. Screens, mirrors, and water surfaces become portals to a metaphysical world where the boundaries between the physical and the virtual dissolve. The artist’s color palette references early 20th-century expressionist traditions while also drawing from the saturation of digital screens, immersing the viewer in a state of hyperreality. The fusion of painting with digital aesthetics makes her work a relevant exploration of contemporary visual culture. Kosheleva’s works have been exhibited internationally, where her artistic language has been recognized for its depth and ambiguity. Her practice embodies the concept of painting as an interface between consciousness and the unconscious, dream and reality, art and technology. Victoria Kosheleva graduated from the Department of Monumental Art at the Moscow Academic Art Institute named after Surikov. After completing her master’s degree, she furthered her studies at Parsons New School in New York. Continuing her exploration of contemporary art and art philosophy at the Free Workshops in Moscow, she later moved to Paris. This move marked a crucial turning point in her creative development, allowing her to reevaluate her academic and creative skills and to develop a unique, personal artistic style. In 2014, Victoria was selected for a year-long residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris – an experience that profoundly influenced her artistic vision. Her commitment to technical precision and emphasis on painterly qualities have become a distinctive hallmark of her work. Since 2014, she has been based in Paris. Over the years, Victoria has collaborated with leading names such as Gucci, Badlon Magazine, and several cultural institutions. In 2023, she created a series of lithographs at the famed Idem Atelier in Paris, with two works now held in the collection of the National Library of France. Victoria has taken part in international cultural projects, including work with the Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg and the first Biennale of the Komi Republic, where her art explored themes of regional identity and heritage. In 2024, Victoria made her solo debut with a personal exhibition at the “Forma” museum space, where her unique approach to contemporary themes received widespread acclaim. Since 2020, she has been a resident of the POUSH and POUSH MANIFESTO initiatives – a Paris-based artist residency program that has become an influential platform for experimental and contemporary art in France. Moreover, for the past two years, Victoria has been working in Pietrasanta, deeply immersing herself in local material practices—particularly with marble and bronze—which allows her to harmoniously blend classical materials with her modern vision.
Born in Italy in 1971, Paola Pivi’s artistic practice is diverse and enigmatic. Commingling the familiar with the alien, Pivi often works with commonly identifiable objects which are modified to introduce a new scale, material or color, challenging the audience to change their point of view. Animals are often cast as protagonists in Pivi’s world. She draws upon their perceived characteristics and instills them with human mannerisms. In Pivi’s art, Polar bears practice yoga, hang from trapezes, and engage with one another. Sprouting multicolored feathers, the artworks are both life-sized and miniaturized as baby bears. Spanning sculpture, video, photography, performance and installation, Pivi’s practice trespasses perceived limits to make possible what before seemed impossible. Zebras frolic in the arctic, goldfish fly on airplanes, and in her 2012 Public Art Fund installation, a Piper Seneca airplane was lifted on its wingtips and installed to constantly rotate forward. Pivi has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including It’s not my job, it’s your job, [mac] Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille; You know who I am, The High Line, We are the Alaskan Tourists, Arken Museum, Denmark (2020); World Record, MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Italy; Art with a view, The Bass Museum Miami Beach, USA (2018); I did it again, Savannah College of Art and Design, USA (2018); I am tired of eating fish, LaRinascente, Italy (2017); Ma’am, Dallas Contemporary, USA (2016); Tulkus 1880 to 2018, FRAC Bourgogne, France (2014); You started it … I finish it, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2014); Share, But It’s Not Fair, Rockbund Art Museum, China (2012); How I roll, Public Art Fund New York, USA (2012); It’s a cocktail party, Portikus, Germany (2008); It just keeps getting better, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2007); My religion is kindness; Thank you, see you in the future, Fondazione Trussardi, Italy (2006). Pivi has exhibited internationally at institutions including Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Centre Pompidou, France; Fondazione Prada, Biennale di Venezia, Italy; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Germany; Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Modern, United Kingdom; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; MOMA PS1, USA; Yokohama Triennale, Japan.
Tai Shani’s artistic practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, uses experimental writing as a guiding method. Oscillating between theoretical concepts and visceral details, Shani’s texts attempt to create poetic coordinates in order to cultivate, fragmentary cosmologies of marginalised nonsovereignty. Taking cues from both mournful and undead histories of reproductive labour, illness and solidarity, her work is invested in recovering feminised aesthetic modes – such as the floral, the trippy or the gothic – in a register of utopian militancy. In this vein, the epic, in both its literary long-form and excessive affect, often shapes Shani’s approach: Her long-term projects work through historical and mythical narratives, such as Christine de Pizan’s allegorical city of women or the social history of psychedelic ergot poisoning. Extending into divergent formats and collaborations. Shani’s projects examine desire in its (infra-)structural dimension, exploring a realism that materially fantasises against the patriarchal racial capitalist present. Tai Shani is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. Her work has been shown extensively in Britain and internationally.
Shafei Xia (ShaoXing, China, 1989) lives and works in Bologna, Italy. Her artistic practice is distinguished by a language that is at once irreverent and refined, addressing themes such as desire, jealousy, and violence, in both symbolic and explicit forms. Xia frequently employs self-portraiture in the guise of a tiger—a symbol of instinctive power and vitality, linked in Chinese alchemy to the active and dynamic principle in opposition to the passive. Through this device, she stages an ironic exchange of roles between men and women, as well as between humans and animals. In her sandalwood paper paintings and ceramic sculptures, Xia reinterprets Chinese erotic traditions and Taoist aesthetics through a reversal of gender roles. Whereas visual culture of the Ming and Qing dynasties depicted women as passive muses, in her work they reclaim autonomy and self-determination: seducing, playing music, and riding tigers. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Set Design from Chongqing University in 2012, Xia moved to Shanghai in 2013, where she began her artistic journey. Since 2017 she has been based in Bologna, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Since 2020, Shafei Xia has been represented by P420, Bologna. Her work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including The Infinite Woman (Fondation Carmignac, 2024), I Licked It, It’s Mine (Museum of Sex, New York, 2024), and Looking at Her (Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge, 2025). Among her recent accolades are the Spirit Now London Acquisition Prize 2024 and the Club GAMeC Prize 2024. Her works are held in public and private collections, including the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College (UK), ILHAM (Malaysia), GAMeC (Bergamo), and the Museum of Sex (New York). In autumn 2025, Xia will participate in Fantastica at the 18th Quadriennale d’Arte in Rome, a show curated by Francesco Bonami.
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