About Art

How can abstraction carry emotion, identity, and lived experience?In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with painter Katherine Bradford, whose luminous work bridges the personal, mythic, and communal. Bradford moved from Maine to New York in the 1980s as a single mother raising school-age twins and became part of the first wave of artists to shape the Williamsburg art community. After more than a decade navigating the Manhattan gallery world, her work has since been recognized internationally and is held in major museum collections.Their conversation spans Bradford’s five-decade painting career, abstraction and figuration, color and process, studio practice, and the challenge of representing human emotion. They also discuss community, motherhood, the evolving art world, and why creativity remains fundamental to how we understand ourselves and one another.This is a conversation about painting as a lifelong practice—and art as a deeply human act.

In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, founder of ART X and ART X Lagos, the leading international art fair in West Africa. Through ART X, Peterside-Schwebig has played a pivotal role in positioning Lagos on the global cultural stage while remaining deeply committed to local communities and creative voices.Their conversation explores the development of ART X Lagos; the importance of engaging both local and international audiences; connecting African artists and collectors; and supporting new generations of creatives through initiatives such as ART X Live!, the ART X Prize, and ART X Cinema. Together, they discuss artistic innovation across Africa, the power of cultural entrepreneurship, and how younger generations are shaping the future of art on the continent and beyond.This is a conversation about building platforms, expanding narratives, and reimagining what global cultural leadership can look like.

What does it mean to read fashion—not just as style, but as culture, politics, and lived experience?In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with designer Carla Fernández, founder of the Mexico City–based fashion house dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the textile knowledge of Indigenous and mestizo communities across Mexico. Fernández’s work demonstrates how manual methods, collaboration, and tradition can generate fashion that is ethical, innovative, and forward-looking.Their conversation explores the connection between head, heart, and hand; the importance of going slowly; creation through trust and friendship; and why innovation can emerge from centuries-old techniques. They discuss fashion as resistance, the politics of clothing, confidence and undergarments, technology and weaving, the realities of fast fashion, and what is lost—and possible—when fashion is treated as disposable.This is a conversation about fashion as cultural expression, collaboration as creation, and the power of choosing the best for the best.

Aindrea Emelife is Curator, Modern and Contemporary at MOWAA (Museum of West African Art), a new museum which opened in Benin City, Nigeria in November 2025. She was also the curator of the Nigeria Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Born in London, United Kingdom, Emelife studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her work focuses on questions around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation. Her recent exhibitions include BLACK VENUS; a survey of the legacy of the Black woman in visual culture which opened at Fotografiska NY and toured to MOAD (San Francisco, USA) and Somerset House (London, UK). Emelife’s first book, A Brief History of Protest Art was released by Tate in March 2022, Emelife has contributed to exhibition catalogues and publications, most recently including Revising Modern British Art (Lund Humphries, 2022). In 2021, Emelife was appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.She and Zuckerman discuss being seen in institutions, how exhibition making can shape the curator, nuance, artists as activists, what a museum can be, power, ancient traditions as innovation, impact, visibility and belonging, the archive, the human imagination, and not being afraid of imaginative possibility!

Kami Gahiga is a curator and art professional based between Kigali and London. Her work primarily focuses on art from the Global South and she has curated several exhibitions across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.  She is an acting contributor to NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art. Kami is the Art Basel VIP Representative for Africa. Previously, she served as the Head of VIP & Gallery Relations at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (London, Marrakech, New York, Hong Kong). She is a patron of the Delfina Foundation (London, UK), a board member of the Tyburn Foundation Board (Harare, Zimbabwe & Umbria, Italy) and is a Nominator for the Norval Sovereign Art Prize (Cape Town, South Africa). Gahiga is the Co-Founder of the Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art opening soon in Kigali, Rwanda!She and Zuckerman discuss Contemporary Africa Art, creating a new art space in Kigali, Rwanda, multigenerational collecting, African patronage, art and culture as the last frontier in Rwanda, creating interest, the experience of exposure, the idea of beginning, how to inspire, finding answers within, artists opening and operating their own spaces on the continent, and writing manifestos!