Latest posts
What Happens When You Put an Art Fair Inside a Palace Full of Secrets?
Built in 1876 to the designs of Józef Huss, the neo-Renaissance palace Villa Róż has lived several lives, from private residence and diplomatic outpost to bureaucratic machine. For decades it housed the British Embassy, and traces of that existence remain embedded in its architecture. Heavy vault doors stand guard over rooms once used to protect…
The Anonymous Body: Naotaka Hiro in Conversation
When Naotaka Hiro moved from Osaka to Los Angeles to begin filmmaking, he realised that directing a crew without speaking the language was not easy. Determined to continue, he turned filmmaking inward, working as both actor and director in a series of experimental early works. Fixated on the dilemma that one cannot see the totality…
Kazakhstan’s Venice Biennale Pavilion Turns Silence Into Something You Can Hear
Rainclouds hang over Venice all morning, flattening the light around the Arsenale into shades of silver and grey as crowds move between pavilions clutching umbrellas and damp press releases. By the time I arrive at the Kazakhstan Pavilion inside the Museo Storico Navale, the vernissage has already thickened into its usual frenzy. “When I first…
“We Forgot That Everything Around Us Is Necessary for Our Survival”: Koen Vanmechelen in Venice
A few days before the Biennale vernissage officially begins, Venice already feels overtaken by the art world, thanks to the wave of collateral openings and private foundation dinners unfolding across the city. Arriving at Palazzo Rota Ivancich, carefully dodging spiky umbrellas and lit cigarettes, the narrow calli outside are dense with visitors moving between events….
Interviews
Akeem Smith’s Work Is “A Lens to Decode the Things That Don’...
Akeem Smith’s new works, presented by Heidi at Art Basel Miami Beach, appear like weathered relics. Rusted metal frames, contorted gates, and fragments of walls are conjoined, holding within them flickering images of faces. The photographs and VHS stills feel as though they’re surfacing through the material itself, tugging the eye toward excavated stories. Raised…
Between Ruin and Revelation: Reginald Sylvester II and the R...
Accra. The first thing you notice is the heat. Not the gentle kind that warms the skin, but a thick, breathing heat that turns the air into something tactile, alive with red dust, incense, and the scent of fresh concrete baking beneath the Ghanaian sun. Then comes the sound, a low metallic hum, like machinery…
The Ambivalence of Objects: In the Studio with Cezary Poniat...
On the heels of his solo show, Pharmakon at Wschód gallery, Polish artist Cezary Poniatowski speaks with Something Curated’s Keshav Anand about the uncanny pull of his new works and what it’s like working as an artist in Warsaw today. His recent reliefs, stitched together from carpets and bits of domestic hardware, carry a quiet…
At Collezione Maramotti, Ndayé Kouagou Turns Language into a Trap
In Reggio Emilia, late spring announces itself through Fotografia Europea. The city quickly resembles a loosened shutter. Passersby thread the arcades with vintage cameras and weird gadgets hanging from their necks. This year, the festival title is Ghosts of the Moment, a formulation that suits photography well. Yet the picture that lodged in my mind…
Poetic Earth: Anna Maria Maiolino’s Six Decades of Transformation and Resistance
Near Belém’s waterfront, hundreds of eggs form a square on the ground, their presence quietly unsettling, as if something could go wrong at any moment. There is already a small crowd when I arrive. I hear two women talking about Anna Maria Maiolino, recalling past performances, as others linger at the edges, pulled in mid-commute,…
Meet city.girls.xp, the Anonymous Duo Behind the Art World’s Favourite Lamps
city.girls.xp is an anonymous artist duo making unique lamps that London’s art scene is swooning over. Set up by two artist besties who transformed their shared tastes into something productive, they present their sculptures in chicly curated single-evening collection drops where artists, gallerists and creatives quickly snap them up. Magpie-like, their works are formed from…
1‑54 Marrakech: An Art Fair in Conversation with the City
Arriving in Marrakech, I was struck by how much had changed – and at the same time, how much hadn’t. My last visit had been in 2012, and while the medina still folds in on itself with the same familiar architecture, sounds and smells, Gueliz is now dense with international high‑street brands, ubiquitous coffee shops…
Guides
The Best Art from 2025
From long-term collaborations and reimagined archives to ambitious institutional projects and experimental forms of hospitality, featuring moments from London, Accra, Berlin, Doha, New Delhi and beyond, the below selection brings together some of the most compelling practices, exhibitions, and ideas that have shaped 2025. “I Have Been Moved to Find Beauty in Places of Deep…
A New Wave of Coastal Cool: An Eating and Drinking Guide to ...
Once upon a time, the great British seaside getaway was practically synonymous with Cornwall and Devon: sun-washed cliffs, pastel beach huts, and fish-and-chip shop queues winding lazily along the promenades. But the tides are shifting, and a new contender is stepping into the spotlight. The Isle of Wight has always had a reputation for cycling and…
A Chef’s Guide to Paris’ Best Restaurants
In Paris, people often ask me where I eat when I’m not working in the restaurant. “Where do you go when you want something real?” Paris is full of polished facades, but the places I return to again and again are the ones that feel alive; restaurants run by people with a point of view,…
Rhythm Alliances: How Sri Lanka Integrates Contemporary Art and Electronic Music
One night after arriving in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, I was in a bare, concrete room listening to fresh electronic dance music. Dialled In, a leading South Asian contemporary music platform, was in town to host a fundraiser to help alleviate Cyclone Ditwah’s crippling aftermath. The opening performance by Paris-born Sri Lankan Da Ya…
‘Atlante’: Mapping Absence and Uncertainty in Naples
The approach to Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples is disarmingly ambiguous, a staircase that withholds any sense of what lies ahead. At the top, there is an unassuming door, a small sign, and a guestbook placed outside, as if the gallery is still deciding how visible it wants to be. Behind the door, the space…
Surrounded by Shrouded Scarecrows, John Alexander Skelton’s ‘Otherworld’ Unfolds
It’s dark and I’m watching my breath dance in January’s cold air. I’m sitting on the stone steps outside South London’s Asylum Chapel, watching people with flushed cheeks exchange smiles and hellos and go on in through a large open door. Inside, the chapel hall glows warmly with twinkling candlelight and cups steaming with hot…
Art After “Emergence”: Why Southeast Asia Can’t Recognise Itself in the Mirror
As ART SG, Southeast Asia’s leading international art fair, returns to Singapore from 23–25 January 2026, questions of visibility, framing, and identity remain central. For the first time, the fair will co-present S.E.A. Focus, an exhibition platform dedicated to showcasing contemporary art from the region. In this essay for Something Curated, John Z.W. Tung, Curator…
From The Archive
Meet Harris Dickinson, the Compelling Lead Actor of ‘B...
British actor Harris Dickinson plays the lead role in Eliza Hittman’s critically acclaimed Beach Rats, which chronicles a young man’s struggle with his sexuality over the course of a summer, amid the stultifying machismo of outer Brooklyn. Opening in select theatres on 24 November, the film follows Frankie, portrayed by Dickinson, as he roams the…
A Print Lover’s Guide to New York
“While being a researcher and archivist usually means that there is no shortage of exciting and novel things to discover,” says Sanam Sindhi, “if you’re as obsessive about your niche interests as I am, there are moments when you can find yourself seemingly at the edge of all there is to know.” New York, for…
SC Exclusive: Notes on a Siren — a Film Essay by Justice Jam...
Director Justice Jamal Jones joins myth with modern themes of Black queerness and trans identity in their latest film, Notes on a Siren. Presented by Something Curated, and exclusively premiering on the site, the film was shot on location at Palm Heights in Grand Cayman. Jones expands on the thinking behind their mesmerising work below….