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Meet the Chicago Trap Artist showing us gangsters have feelings too

Art is the purest form of human expression. It gives us the outlet we need to truly express our feelings. Whether it’s through fashion, dance, music, or visual arts, art helps us project the creativity that all of us possess, out into the world.

The true beauty of art lies in the story behind the creation. For Angel, co-owner of Trap Artist, he is proving through his art brand that no matter how gangster you are, you can still show your emotions.

“I’m building something that’s bigger than myself to help others that feel how I feel. You can change your mind, you can change the way you think to become who you really want to be.”

Growing up, Angel was a lonely soul. Little Village, one of Chicago, Illinois’ more prominent neighborhoods was his stomping grounds. Known for its strong Mexican Heritage, and for being a low-income neighborhood, there was not much opportunity for Angel growing up.

When Angel turned five-years-old, his life changed forever when his father abandoned him and his mother. This sent him spiraling down a road of depression.

“I didn’t have a father figure to look up to. In my family, there’s a lot of gang members so, those are my inspirations are my motivations you know? So I always had the wrong idea of who to follow or who to choose to be my leader because I never had one.”

Angel’s picture was looking grim. Coming from a long history of gang culture Angel knows he could end up dead or jail if he chose that route. Many of Angel’s family members, including his father, are Latin Kings.

“I just glorified that lifestyle. I use to think that would get me the girls, that would get me the money, that would get me anything. I lost a lot of friends growing up. It made me realize that I gotta start thinking with my head and find the motivation to do something. I wasn’t very in-tune with school, so I felt like I never had a purpose in life.”

Although Chicago’s south-side is riddled with crime, art still cuts through the landscape. As a youth, Angel was captivated by the graffiti he’d see while roaming the streets.

“I got into art the wrong way. I was into drawing little crowns on my notebook, doing the wrong stuff. I thought that was cool. I never had my own voice. You can still be gangster you can still be hard and still show your emotion and that’s what I want to represent.”

 

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Something new. Louis Vuitton X Trap Artist unoffical collab 💯❤💲 comment & like

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In Angel’s freshman year of high school, he took an art class. His teacher pushed him to be different after expressing to Angel that it’s easier to express yourself through art would be easier to express yourself through words.

“She always let me do my own thing and still push me. She always told me to try something different. So instead of drawing graffiti letters, she’d tell me to try painting. She pushed me to be different and that’s what helped develop my style.”

The only way to have success is by staying positive, is the TrapArtist motto. Angel is becoming the change that he wants to see in this world. Art helped deliver Angel from his long battle with depression.

“I live for art. I live for every single thing you see on that page. Like I can’t sleep at night. I need to share my message. I feel like I can use my art to help others and talk about problems that need to be said. We don’t do anything about people who feel depressed or anxious and that doesn’t help them accomplish their dreams or help them follow their actual course of action.”

Since taking his art seriously, Angel has been using his creativity to spread his message. It’s been a little over a year and there’s been some change since Angel’s Trap Artist Instagram opened up shop. It now has amassed over 9k followers.

 

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line based on this. Comment ur opinions lmk what u think of it please I love y’all 💜⚠️

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His “Sensitive Thugs” movement is giving people an outlet to communicate their emotions, even through the darkest of times. Now, Angel is trying to give back.

“I want to figure out a way to do charity events, where I sell my artwork and I want to give half the proceeds to get charities for school supplies and artwork supplies. It’s not even about me anymore. When I was 16, 17. I wanted to be a thug. I dead-ass didn’t see myself doing anything like this. Now I wake up trying to strive to be a better person and figure out how to change lives even if its one person at a time.”

Life is art. Every day, we often forget that we are living in someone else’s creation or living out someone’s expression. We forget that the parks, shopping centers, and schools we attend were all constructed in someone’s mind first. Then it manifests into something life-changing that we use, visit or see every day.

Desi-Pop artist Maria Qamar is reclaiming art space for women of color

Maria Qamar, better known by her Instagram handle @hatecopy, is a Desi-Pop artist whose art refuses translation. After working as a copy editor (hence the pseudonym), Qamar turned to art as a form of therapy.

“[In] the environment I was raised in, anything that was art related was something to be ashamed of,”

Qamar told Kulture Hub before the opening of her show FRAAAAAANDSHIP, now on view at the Richard Taittinger Gallery through Sept. 2.

“The arts are such a prevalent thing in our culture. Look at the temples and look at the mosques and the buildings and the architecture and the food–everything is art. It’s strange to me how a career in the arts is looked down upon.”

 

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After posting a drawing on Instagram inspired by the work of 1960s pop-artist Roy Lichtenstein — but now with full lips, brown skin, a bindi, and a speech bubble proclaiming “I burnt the rotis” — she began to gain a devout following.

Now, Qamar has done illustrations for Bon Appétite‘s Priya Krishna and decorated the sets of Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project. She also created a mural for the San Francisco based restaurant Besharam, with her illustrations adorning the bistro’s plates as well as their Instagram profile photo.

Social media platforms have revolutionized the art world in a big way. The autonomous nature of the internet has, across the board, has allowed artists whose voices were previously barred from being heard to express themselves, loud and proud.

PC: Richard Taittinger Gallery | Maria Qamar: Faltu Tradition

Qamar herself turned to Instagram as a type of “judgment-free” gallery. While the Internet is a “hellhole that we all need to learn how to maneuver at some point,” it was also a way to present her art without having to go through any kind of filter first.

“I wonder if [my work] is mainstream. I want it to be mainstream,” Qamar told Kulture Hub.

“I want these topics to be exhausted, because that means we are moving past a lot of the pain and trauma in the way women of color are talked to and the way we are treated in other communities and our own… I’m still growing, I’m still learning.”

PC: Richard Taittinger Gallery | Maria Qamar: Didi 1, Didi 3

For Qamar, the path from Internet success to her first NYC solo show allowed her to build her own image in a way that felt comfortable to her. Due to her online presence, she was able to have relative control in almost every step of her professional career, something that is rare when it comes to the art world.

However, getting her start independently of traditional mechanisms of support was very difficult. Qamar, who had never gone to art school, had to figure out a means to support herself all on her own. She now runs a successful merchandise site where fans can buy prints, her book, Trust No Aunty, as well as her fashion line.

 

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Qamar’s body of work and the stories behind it serves as a perfect bridge between the old and the new. As stated previously, her biggest inspiration came from the iconic comic book portraits of the pop-artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Upon first glance, the connections between Qamar’s body of work and Lichtenstein’s hyper fixation on WASP comic book women are clear. In the same way that Lichtenstein studied the mass media portrayal of the 1960s (white) womanhood, Qamar incorporates her personal history and culture as a means of exploring contemporary femininity as a woman of color.

“I try to mirror experiences that I’ve seen. It’s really a reflection of: ‘look at how ridiculous you look when you do something like this… You don’t want to be that guy… You don’t want to be the person policing other women.’”

PC: Richard Taittinger Gallery |Maria Qamar: Kalu Jadu

Qamar continued:

“It’s time for us to reclaim spaces for us to feel safe, as women, as women of color.”

Qamar is fascinated with the similarities between Lichtenstein’s work and the melodrama of Indian soap operas. Qamar stated that if you compare a Lichtenstein piece to a dramatic cut in a soap opera, the effect is virtually the same. Qamar continued:

“It’s the exact same reaction. It’s so dramatic, it’s so colorful–like, OH MY GOD! But it’s coming from two different sides of the world. When I looked at that, I thought: that’s exactly who I am. I’m a mix of these two cultures that I both call home.”

PC: Richard Taittinger Gallery | Maria Qamar: Bad Influence

Born in Pakistan, Qamar moved to Ontario at the age of nine. Growing up as a South Asian girl in Canada was difficult, and Qamar cites her experiences being bullied as one of the largest influences on her art being a form of therapy.

She isn’t interested in translating her work for the sake of the comfort of white audiences. Her main piece of advice for fellow young artists is to collaborate whenever possible and to be kind to one another.

PC: Richard Taittinger Gallery | Maria Qamar (@hatecopy): Aurat

“There’s a lot of the sense of ‘me me me’ in the world of social media, and you forget that there are other people who live other lives… Everything is so centered around you, you can begin to feel isolated in your own experiences. Build and really pay attention to your friendships.”

And, most importantly:

“Call your friends — don’t text — call.”

Make sure you pop out to Qamar’s show in the LES at the Richard Taittinger Gallery. It’s on thru Sept. 2.

 

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How trans creative Julian Miholics uses art to depict LGBT+ identities

The work of the Ontario-based artist Julian Miholics can only be described as an open wound in a field of wildflowers. Raw yet also quietly gentle, Miholics combines hallucinatory imagery and text to create cataclysmic illustrations of human and animal figures alike.

Both his painted and ceramic works focalizes the contorted bodies of animals and otherworldly figures. Frequently, these creatures are depicted slack-jawed and wide-eyed, howling in either pain or ecstasy.

 

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“I find inspiration comes the same with all mediums I work with,” Miholics told Kulture Hub.

“The sense of vulnerability, rawness, hope and love, it’s all the same.”

Miholics also describes his work as an expression of personal catharsis. The recurring motifs in his body of work—yellow-bellied doves representing peace, rainbow crowned skulls, representing eternal life, and the constant presence of the word “home”—all represent the salve-like quality the work has for those struggling with similar feelings.

“Mental illness is too often hard to put into words, so art has helped to describe depression, anxiety, and psychosis,” Miholics told Kulture Hub. Miholics continued:

“As a gay trans man, I get to depict my own identity in pieces too. Too many LGBT+ people don’t get to see themselves growing up or as adults in media/art. So, I’m very happy it’s part of my job creating.”

 

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While he is drawn to both traditional and 3D mediums equally, Miholics found a connection with ceramic work at the H.B. Secondary’s Bealart program. Drawing inspiration from our Paleolithic ancestors, Miholics retranslates the figures from his notebooks into their present, physical forms.

Elaborating upon what attracted him to ceramic work in the first place, Miholics stated:

“[Ceramics are] an incredibly personal and intimate interaction with materials from the earth… Clay is social, cultural, and will stand the test of time for thousands of years to come.”

 

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In 2016, Miholics created an installation piece in honor of his late brother, who committed suicide the year previous. Titled “A Memorial for Him and My Grieving,” the piece is astonishingly raw.

The installation features two children’s lawn chairs, a cast, a stuffed dog above a Bible, a string of matches, and an original painting depicting a creature representing grief itself curled behind a house on fire.

The words “MY HOUSE” float just above the creature’s head. Discussing the piece at hand, Miholics said:

“Being able to make art about my loss and grieving as well as spread on the memory of my brother was very healing. We all live on through memory.”

Miholics is also a strong-minded social activist and uses his art to communicate this fact openly. Recently, Miholics got involved in a Twitter/Instagram scuffle this past June over a piece of his which featured a dog holding a Pride flag in its mouth. The space above the dog’s head read:

“Keep corporate and cops out of Pride.”

This, of course, is in reference to the ongoing debate concerning the presence of police at Pride events.

 

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In the edited caption of the Instagram post, Miholics wrote:

“Not every individual cop is a bad person but the system they choose to participate in has left a raw and bleeding gash on the community with continued abuse towards us. The only way to overcome this is a complete reformation of the police system.”

In regards to this piece as well as the political nature of some of his other work, Miholics told Kulture Hub:

“When a large amount of people made up of many minorities are telling you the policing system is inherently flawed and violent or dismissive, it’s best to listen.”

Last year, Miholics, as well as 59 fellow artists, put together a Halloween zine in order to raise money and awareness for Supporting Our Youth (SOY) Toronto, a local LGBT+ charity.

SOY helps young LGBTQ folk with life planning as well as offering mental and primary care services.

 

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With the help of their combined social media fanbase, the zine was able to raise $400 for SOY. Miholics plans on organizing more fundraisers similar to this in the future.

When it comes to advice regarding younger artists trying to gain an online following, Miholics said to put everything you create out into the world, even if the piece isn’t as refined as you’d like it to be.

He also suggested the use of hashtags and networking in order to build a curated audience with similar interests as you as well as experimentation with different mediums.

Most of all, however, Miholics recommended that creatives on the come up,

“Make art of what interests and inspires you, gets you up in the morning. If that passion is there, people will feel it and support you.”

 

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Shame on Sackler: How P.A.I.N. is making moves to shun big pharma

Johnson & Johnson will begin to deliver a three-week defense in their Oklahoma civil trial concerning their involvement in the opioid epidemic. This historic trial comes in the wake of the increasingly volatile evolution concerning Big Pharma’s involvement (or, some may argue, orchestration) of the opioid epidemic.

Interestingly enough, the protestors at the front lines of advocating for pharmaceutical responsibility are artists who are targeting the most important institutions of their field.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, and the Opioid Crisis

The Opioid Epidemic began in the 1990s. Back then pharmaceutical companies pushed doctors worried about their patient’s pain towards opioids by using misleading marketing that underplayed the risks of opioid use and exaggerated its benefits. This would quickly lead to Americans becoming the front running consumers of opioids.

In 2007 Purdue Pharma plead guilting in a 634.5 million dollar lawsuit for advertising the opioid OxyContin as safer and less addictive than other opioids. U.S. Attorney John Brownlee summarized:

“Purdue … acknowledged that it illegally marketed and promoted OxyContin by falsely claiming that OxyContin was less addictive, less subject to abuse and diversion, and less likely to cause withdrawal symptoms than other pain medications – all in an effort to maximize its profits,”

Purdue Pharma is a private pharmaceutical company principally owned by the descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler.

The former chairman and president of Purdue, Richard Sackler, is just about as close as you can get to a real-life Bond villain without shaving your head and adopting a Russian accent. He has done nearly everything he can to distance himself from being illustrated as the orchestrator of the opioid crisis. However, he has emerged as one of its leading boogeymen.

Sackler has kept his face out of the press and remains to be one of the most elusive yet most infamous figures in the medical field. Recently, his presence has been limited to a 2015 deposition in which it was revealed that he had said in a 1999 email:

“You won’t believe how committed I am to make OxyContin a huge success. It is almost that I have dedicated my life to it.”

The details of the 2015 deposition were published in Feb. by STAT and ProPublica, you can read the transcript itself as well as a summary of the deposition here.

These files are horrific. Furthermore, it was a calculated move that Sackler did not allow the video of the deposition to be released, as reporters simply reading a transcription of a deposition is significantly less engaging than a recording of the deposition itself.

Luckily, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver contacted Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Michael Keaton (Batman), Michael K. Williams (The Wire), and Richard Kind (Inside Out) to perform excerpts from the 2015 deposition, and they totally delivered.


Protests in NYC lead to action

The fight to remove the Sackler signature from cultural and educational institutions across the world began in March, in when Britain’s National Portrait Gallery revealed that had made a “joint decision” with the Sackler family to cancel a pre-planned 1.3 million dollar donation from the family.

 

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Nan Goldin, a celebrated photographer and former addict, has started the foundation P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) to advocate for the removal of the Sackler’s namesake from museums and universities alike.

P.A.I.N demands that Purdue Pharma, Mundipharma and Sackler pharmaceutical companies worldwide donate all funds to programs helping rehabilitate the communities and families destroyed by the opioid epidemic.

Goldin is most known for her portraits that serve as a type of visual autobiography. Her work documents both herself and her friends in the LGBTQ, heroin-addicted subcultures. Her pieces are intimate portrayals of those closest to her and the communities they are involved with.

 

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Therefore, with the political nature of her work, it should come as so surprise that Goldin organized P.A.I.N to protest the Sackler family’s involvement in the opioid epidemic by staging die-ins and demonstrations at artistic institutions that carry the family’s name.

The protests began at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May of 2018 in the Sackler wing. Demonstrators brought banners reading “Fund Rehab” and “Shame on Sackler” and threw fake pill bottles into the wing’s iconic reflective pool. The Met said it is suspending donations from the family but will not remove their name from the wing.

In March, P.A.I.N staged another protest at the Guggenheim, in which they threw slips of paper resembling opioid prescription slips into the central rotunda of the famous artistic landmark as well as held up prescription bottles.

This was in an effort to advocate for the renaming of the Guggenheim’s Sackler Education Center as well as to demand that the institution stop receiving donations from the family.

 

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The protest worked somewhat, and the Guggenheim also announced it would no longer “accept gifts” from the Sackler family nearly a month later. The Tate Modern and the Museum of Natural History made similar statements.

It is a little hard to wrap your head around the idea that an institution refusing money from a private entity has the capability to hurt that entity in the first place. John Oliver put the reason why deplatforming in this manner is important in cases such as the Sackler family.

“I know that, as punishments go, getting to keep 1.3 million dollars doesn’t sound all that fucking bad. But keep in mind that these people have infinite money and seem to enjoy nothing more than using it to purchase social status. So, not getting to put their names on things might be a real punishment for them. But I would argue that that should only be half of it, the other half is having to put their name on the opioid crisis they fought so hard to distance themselves from.”

In their first European protest, P.A.I.N staged a demonstration at the Louvre on Monday, carrying banners that read: “Take down the Sackler name” (in reference to their 12 Sackler rooms) and performing another die-in. The Louvre has yet to comment directly upon the matter.

 

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P.A.I.N. has set up a Change.org petition demanding that Purdue and the greater Sackler family fund rehabilitation and education progress to directly address, and begin to mend, the crisis.

WhIsBe’s ‘Back to School Shopping’ rebelliously shows the importance of gun control

In his most recent installation, “Back to School Shopping,” the artist WhIsBe presents the vision of a capitalist hell-scape of a future in which a casual school shopping trip includes stocking up on brass knuckles, handguns, and body armor.

WhIsBe, most known for his work in the street art world, uses Warholian tactics in order to mesh representations of childhood innocence with more sinister notions of greater American violence.

WhIsBe gained international attention for his “Vandal Gummy” series, a project that depicts various gummy bears holding Department of Corrections placards.

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This series was featured as a part of Coach’s Signature Remix collection, in which they commissioned street artists to incorporate Coach’s signature pattern in their most iconic work.

The Vandal Gummy series was the artist’s first exploration of the intersection between childhood innocence and larger American violence — up until the opening of “Back to School Shopping.”

This installation, created in partnership with the Starrett Lehigh gallery for their Social Impact Month, paints an incredibly bleak window into the future of the commercialization of mass tragedy.

With companies such as Bullet Blocker and Guard Dog Security selling bulletproof backpacks after the Parkland shooting, this future may not be as distant as we’d like.

Maintaining the highest standards and guidelines for all bulletproof vests, bulletproof clothing, bulletproof backpacks, and body armor, more companies like Bulletproof Zone will also have a new and younger customer.

“I don’t like to tell people what to think,” WhIsBe told Kulture Hub.

“There’s no secret agenda to it… My work is not passive aggressive, it’s all right there.”

Art: WhIsBe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas
Art: WhIsBe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas
Art: WhIsBe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas

Here, WhIsBe makes an adept illustration of this future. Mannequins wear bulletproof vests with ninja turtles, sequins, and Louis Vuitton insignias. Outside, the windows of the Starrett Lehigh gallery space loudly advertise the vests, stating: “Kids & Adults Bulletproof Vests, Available in all sizes, Kids sizes start at 49.99, Adults sizes start at 99.99.”

These prices are coincidentally around the same price as the uncertified “bulletproof backpack inserts” sold by BackPack Armor in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

“Safety defense boxes” — aka children’s lunch pails — are nailed to the walls, each one stocked with a gun, taser, pepper spray, a first aid kit, brass knuckles, and a snack. A claw machine called “Gun Control” encourages kids to take a chance and play for prizes such as handguns and AR-15s.

Art: WhIsBe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas
Art: WhIsBe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas

Littered around the space are WhIsBe’s iconic Vandal Gummies and along one of the far walls, a series of prints depicting Peanuts characters with a similar dystopian context.

One lemonade stand sign reads: “Psychiatric help Guns & Ammo 5¢” with a bottom text of “The Doctor is MIA.” These pieces deal with larger injustices concerning mental health awareness and lack of background checks as talking points in the gun control debate.

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“I originally wanted to do something with bulletproof vests a couple of years ago,” WhIsBe told Kulture Hub concerning his initial vision for “Back to School Shopping.”

“But [with the surge in mass shootings] I couldn’t avoid what was going on culturally. It started to fester in my head and so essentially I took this idea of bulletproof vests, [realizing] we would have to have bulletproof vests for kids eventually, [and then thought] what would it be like if that was just a normal piece of everyday life?”

“It’s about seeing things for what I feel they really are,” WhIsBe continued.

“Sometimes when it is sitting right in front of your face you just need to present [your audience] with what they already know. All I do is bridge the gaps between a train of thought.”

WhIsBe partnered with The Brady Campaign and is donating the proceeds of “Back to School Shopping” to the organization. The Brady Campaign states on their website that they work on both a legislative and community-based level in order to meet their goal of reducing gun violence 25 percent by 2025.

With “Back to School Shopping,” WhIsBe presents his vision of the future without actively pushing his own opinions onto others.

Whisbe | Photo Cred: Jesse Vargas

“If you come to the installation and have a strong reaction, you are clearly affected by what is going on,” WhIsBe said.

“Take your own individual action on the subject. I’ve taken my action by presenting how I feel about what is going on. The simple take away is ‘do something about it’–but not in a jerk kind of way.”


Make sure to check out WhIsBe’s Back to School Shopping installation at Starrett-Lehigh. The show runs thru June 30.

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How 5-year-old King Singh’s fight with cancer brought love and art to the NYSE

Meet King Singh, the five-year-old beast from Queens, who after three years of constant chemotherapy can still laugh in the face of cancer.

Our squad at Kulture Hub had the amazing opportunity to talk to King and his family about the love that’s recently been pouring down on him.

King Saladeen, Sue Tsai, Ruby Sneaks, and Trippy Pins were just some of the big supporters King had around him at the New York Stock Exchange. King’s father Michael Singh told us how grateful he was for the support:

“That’s why we’re so happy that we met all these artists because through art, there’s a way he found to escape the pain — escape the daily struggle of taking chemotherapy every single day.”

King isn’t just your everyday kid. He was diagnosed with G6PD at the age of two, then while monitoring him on a daily basis, he was found to also have Leukemia. For those who don’t really know how detrimental these diseases can be, get ready.

G6PD is an incurable blood-enzyme deficiency that’s only delayed by constant blood transfusions and rest. After being diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in the high-risk category in 2016, things were looking grim for King and his family, midway into the second year of his life.

Although this was treatable with chemo, G6PD created some critical complications.

“The chemo is given to him everywhere because blood cancer could travel to any organ in the body and the brain… He had to rehabilitate himself at the age of 3 and learn to start walking and talking again,” said Michael.

Vincristine toxicity, from chemotherapy, made him unable to walk for months. Neuropathy left nerve damage throughout his body as well as leukoencephalopathy which made his brain swell.

These are just some of the complications this kindergartner has had to deal with. He spent the rest of 2016 and the majority of 2017 hospitalized and isolated, but King never stopped fighting.

His father was with him every step of the way, while his mother carried the financial burden on her shoulders. Being a Leo, it was already written in the stars he’d be a fighter, but no one knew his own strength, besides himself.

He had to re-learn how to actually walk and communicate again from being bedridden for months, essentially without being given any real hope.

After an absolutely ridiculous amount of blood and platelet transfusions, lumbar punctures, chemotherapy infusions, and so much more, we think it’s safe to safe King is one of the most inspirational people we’ve ever met.

Now, at 5-years-old, he’s being recognized by some powerful people at the NYSE, as well as being one of the biggest childhood cancer and blood advocates of the generation. See our video with King below. 

Against all odds, King’s also a crucial participant in an experimental study that helps newly diagnosed kids in the future. Quick sidenote — his dream is to meet Drake and we think a kid as unstoppable and determined as King should have no problem linking with another GOAT.

Even if it’s not in our immediate family, everyone should be aware of how these diseases are tearing families apart, around the nation and across the globe. Information is power, and if there’s any way you can help the next family by paying it forward, get out there and make a difference!

Check out King’s website for more information about his life-threatening disease and make sure you support his journey to recovery on GoFundMe.

Everything counts.

NYC SALT continues to teach youngins the ins-and-outs of the photo industry

NYC SALT has been — for over a decade — creating opportunities for the city’s kids to learn the inner and outer workings of the photography industry.

They just completed their latest Annual Gallery Show displaying hundreds of student photos and artwork. Kulture Hub was fortunate to be there for the amazing event along with over 75 students.

 

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I had the opportunity to speak with NYC SALT’s founder Alicia Hansen, Industry professional and volunteer Kelly Goucher and several of the NYC SALT students.

What is NYC SALT?

NYC SALT does everything from photography courses to college prep to mentoring and supporting students with internships.

 

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Kelly Goucher relates the 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate to the power of NYC SALT as a grassroots organization.

“People forget about the successes of grassroots organizing… With SALT, it’s quality over quantity,” said Groucher.

Alicia Hansen remembers starting SALT in 2009 out of a small after-school photography class in Washington Heights. The class had eight students all of which went on to go to college and pursue successful careers in and out of the photography industry. Hansen had been working with National Geographic when she began NYC SALT.

She felt the need to share her skills and expertise with a new generation of students and was happy to find plenty of willing participants. One-hundred percent of NYC SALT students are accepted to college and 87 percent of them are first-generation college students.

“We believe that everybody is creative. Everyone,” said Hansen.


Daniel Martinez

Daniel Martinez was one of the Alumni at the this year’s NYC SALT Annual Gallery event. Martinez is a wedding photographer, filmmaker, documentary producer, professional Alumni in the field.

“NYC SALT is not just a photography program. Saying NYC SALT is just a photography program is like saying Bohemian Rhapsody is just a song,” said Daniel Martinez

Daniel Martinez is also not just a photographer, he’s also a designer. His most recent work Today I Became an Artist includes vibrant and colorful abstract facial sketches. The prints are available to purchase on his website along with merchandise featuring the artwork.

 

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Ayman Siam

I also spoke to a recent high school graduate, Ayman Siam. Siam’s work Dimensions was one of the showcased on the Bathhouse building banners and posters for the evening.

“Getting involved with SALT was one of the best decisions I’ve made period,” said Ayman Siam.

@siam.ayman

Ayman is a son of a taxi driver from Bangladesh and the annual gallery marked his second year with SALT.

Siam was offered a scholarship to NYU and is interested in exploring a possible career in engineering or business. Ayman also shared that he’s looking to incorporate his new found love for photography in the future.

“[NYC SALT] gave me the tools to network, to be more social and to reach my definition of success.”


Stella

Stella, also known as Ydalmi Estrella, was also one of the night’s speakers. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Hunter this Spring. Stella shared that it took eight years, three gap years, three different schools in different states, and visits to 25 different countries to get to where she is now.

As an aspiring filmmaker, Stella shared her story of losing her father to false imprisonment and the hope of reuniting with him in the coming weeks.

“I am the first American born in my family and also the last.”

Stella felt that NYC SALT gave her the courage to pursue photography, visual arts, and filmmaking to tell the stories that were not being represented in media.

Stella also expressed that the program not only served as an outlet but gave her the tools as a solution to fight against the extreme social injustices of our age.

“NYC SALT gave us the outlet to use artistic expression…they also gave us the platform to heal our traumas.”

 

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The photography program does what grassroots organizations do best and supports those who need it the most.

Over the course of the night, NYC Salt was able to raise $15,000 for the coming Fall 2019 program. Donations are still open and encouraged online. For real, NYC SALT leaves a lasting effect and makes real changes to the lives of real kids and young adults.

Who are the ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ artists amplifying Black creativity?

Our protagonist in the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It is an artist. Much of the story in season 2 is about how she struggles to fulfill her most authentic creative destiny.

Nola Darling’s work in the series is honest and increasingly political, as she navigates blackness, womanhood, and queerness all together informing her art.

Darling’s art is based on Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, a Brooklyn based artist whose work is anything but apolitical. Fazlalizadeh is an artist with great talent and activism which we explore in a recent article.

In the #NationTime episode, Fazlalizadeh makes a cameo presenting her art along with several other artists. But who are they?

First up is Carrie Mae Weems.

Born in Portland Oregon to Carrie Polk and Myrlie Weems in 1953, Carrie Mae Weems became interested in the arts at a young age. She began participating in street theatre and dance at 12. Political thought also often informed her work.

In her young adulthood, she joined a Marxist organization and worked as an organizer for a decade. Her work using the medium of black and white photography highlights the reality of being Black in America.

Her art also explores family relationships and domesticity, namely in her 1990 “Kitchen Table Series.” Her piece in the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It is “The Shape of Things.” Carrie Mae Weems took the photograph while in Africa in 1993. The photo depicts an elegant architecture from Djenné, Mali which suggests the female form.


Tschabalala Self

 

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⭐️

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The episode #NationTime also features artist Tschabalala Self. A painter, Self presents her piece “Milk Chocolate.” The piece depicts a sexualized Black female body.

Based in New Haven, CT, Tschabalala Self considers her current body of work to be “primarily devoted to examining the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality” through the Black female body.


Doreen Garner

Dorreen Garner, a sculptor, presents her piece “Saartjie’s Triangle,” inspired by the South African woman (Sara) Saartjie Baartman. Saartjie was a victim of sex trafficking in the 19th century and subject to horrific treatment exhibited as a freak show attraction in Europe.

Garner’s sculptures are intentionally lifelike and traumatic. Her work seeks to highlight trauma. Her latest project is called “White Man on a Pedestal” based on J. Marion Sims who is considered the father of modern gynecology and achieved this title through torturing Black women.

He performed surgeries on black women without anesthesia.  He claimed that Black people did not experience pain and therefore did not need the anesthesia. Garner’s work seeks to place this trauma and pain in plain view for onlookers to experience without the ability to turn away.


LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier is a visual artist, photographer, and advocate. Her work addresses industrialism, rustbelt revitalization, and environmental justice, healthcare inequity as well as family and communal history.

Her “Flint is Family” series on #Nation Time, depicts black and white photographs of the devastation of the lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan’s water supply. ELLE Magazine published the “Flint is Family” series in the 2016 September issue.

Frazier produced a photo documentary with the same title, placing her subjects as the main storytellers.


Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar, painter and sculptor presents his piece “Seeing Through Time.” His work specifically seeks to recontextualize the past into contemporary relevance.

The interiors of his work, the materials that he uses, intentionally lay bare in the same line of logic. What is often left beneath artwork is brought to the forefront of the art. “Seeing Through Time,” depicts the outline of a painting of a likely white woman a young black boy serving her.

Inside the outline of the woman is the face of a Black woman. The painting along with Kaphar’s other work shows the hidden truth beneath commended works of art and the symbolism of their history in America.


UncuttArt (aka Re.Mark.Able)

The next artist in #Nation Time is ‘Re.Mark.Able’ who is actually the artist UncuttArt, known for his work “Protect Yo HeART.”

‘Re.Mark.Able’ presents a piece called “Duality.” UncuttArt’s “Protect Yo HeART” work seeks to promote wellness, self-love, and mental and emotional health. His skills are largely self-taught, including designing clothing.

UncuttArt’s work is deeply entrenched in social media and urban spaces. You can peep his interview with Kulture Hub on IG here.


Juliana Huxtable

 

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#done #thankgodesss #sleepdeprived

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Juliana Huxtable is a DJ performance artist, painter, and writer. Her work is informed by intersectionality and self-expression.

Her sculpture work in “Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)” presents a feminine figure in the style of Nubian and Egyptian art. The figure has a triumphant Black identity that explores femininity and sexuality, as its creator was born intersex and raised male.

Huxtable’s piece in #NationTime “Transexual Empire,” does something similar. It has a futuristic and celebratory air of sexual diversity.


Amy Sherald

Painter, Amy Sherald presents “She Always Believed the Good in Those She Loved.” Her most notable painting, however, may be Michelle Obama’s portrait. Sherald’s career has spanned decades even before Mrs. Obama’s portrait reveal. Skin tones are distinctly grayscale across her paintings.

The titles of her latest works seek to tell a story about who the subjects are. The Obama portrait was particularly important because of the context of Black images in the National Portrait Gallery.

Michelle Obama’s portrait is one that commands notice.


Kennedy Yanko

 

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I was given a name, I took what worked and left what didn’t. . . . #inthestudio 📸 @dylanbeckmanphoto

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Kennedy Yanko was not exhibited in the #NationTime episode but she did appear on She’s Gotta Have It as Reed, a fellow artist.

Yanko is a painter-sculptor based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. On the show, she explains her work as being a way to make certain materials such as metal and marble into organic visuals.

She connects all materials to their natural essence, into atoms.


The artists showcased in She’s Gotta Have It gives validity and identity to a show that seeks to amplify Black art. The artists are all distinct and powerful in the way they command their craft.

Actress Tilda Swinton breaks gender barriers with new ‘Orlando’ exhibit

Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography is, above all else, a delicately crafted love letter to her mistress Vita Sackville-West.

The novel is one of Woolf’s most provocative works, specifically for its inciting event in which the main character, Orlando, undergoes a fantastical sex-change midway through the novel and lives for 300 years.

Considered to be satirical historiography about the British estate, Orlando serves as an intricate commentary concerning the perceptions of gender, imperialism, and natural force.

Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation of the novel served as a crucial experiment in representing the fluidity of gender and sexuality in a cinematic manner. Orlando (1992) was considered to be Tilda Swinton’s break-out role as an actress and established her as an important figure in the film industry.

Almost thirty years after the film’s release, Swinton has collaborated with The Aperture Foundation as a guest editor and curator of their Summer 2019 issue to further explore Orlando in a contemporary context. The issue is paired with an accompanying exhibition that opened May 24 at Aperture Gallery.

In her opening statement about the exhibition, Swinton wrote:

“I have come to value the landscape of this beloved book far less as being only about gender and far more as being about the profound flexibility of the fully awake and sensate spirit… I have come to see Orlando as a story about the life and development of a human striving to become liberated entirely from the constructs of prescriptive (tired old binary) gender or social norms of any kind.”

 

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For the latest issue of Aperture, guest editor Tilda Swinton invited a group of artists and writers to make work inspired by Virginia Woolf’s pioneering 1928 novel “Orlando.” . In “Orlando,” Woolf tells the tale of a young nobleman in the age of Queen Elizabeth I who lives for centuries—and along the way mysteriously shifts gender, a point that is radically rendered as a nonevent. Now, Swinton calls upon Woolf’s central themes—curiosity, transformation, and the deep perspective that is earned from a long life—and connects them to our present day. In a look behind the scenes, Swinton notes, “this issue of Aperture will be a salute to limitlessness, and a heartfelt celebration of the fully inclusive and expansive vision of life exemplified by the extraordinary artists collected here.” Read more at aperutre.org/blog . Pre-order the issue now through our link in bio. And visit “Orlando,” an exhibition guest curated by Tilda Swinton, opening on May 24 at Aperture Gallery in New York. . Cover: Vivane Sassen (@vivianesassenstudio), from the series “Venus & Mercury,” 2019. Courtesy the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Sculpture belongs to Musée du Louvre, Paris, and Château de Versailles, France #ApertureMagazine

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Potter’s work opens the show with a series of six pre-production images that she used to help secure funding for Orlando. Potter took these photos in the Sackville-West estate, the main inspiration for Woolf’s 1928 novel. These photos display the elaborate costume pieces Swinton wore in both her male and female portrayals of Orlando.

While Swinton pushed many times in her interview with The New York Times that she believed that Orlando was about much more than just gender, the show largely focuses on depictions and perceptions of gender and sexuality. Only the work of American photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya delves deeper into the novel to explore its blatant racism.

Sepuya, who listed Orlando as one of his main artistic inspirations in an interview with i-D, is an artist who attempts to deconstruct traditional photographic perception. Each one of his works prominently features a camera pointed directly at the viewer, effectively turning the photograph into a mirror his audience is looking into.

While his piece “Darkroom Mirror (_2100693)” below was not featured in the exhibition, it is a piece that exemplifies his study of the apparatus itself.

 

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Darkroom Mirror (_2100693), 2017, 24×32”

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In the show, Sepuya’s photographs explore the two moments in which Woolf describes Orlando’s violent and purposeless assault of a family heirloom: the preserved head of a Moor.

While most older (read: white) critics chalk these two scenes up as just another layer of satire concerning British heritage, Woolf does not treat this idea with the delicacy it deserved.

A 21st century reading of the novel shows an ignorant, shallow, disregard for the power dynamics at hand. She didn’t have any right to use the n-word when Orlando recalls the assault later in the novel. It could be said that Woolf was a “product of her time,” however that does not mean she should not be held accountable for these scenes.

In the New York Times interview conducted by Ted Loos, Loos mentions to Swinton, “a particularly fraught moment related to race.” It’s important here that we call it for what it is: Orlando has two moments that are blatantly racist.

It’s important to directly engage with this exact rhetoric from the onset of attempting to engage with the novel as a whole. Dancing around the issue at hand–describing it as a “fraught moment”–dampens its severity.

 

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The Conditions, on view

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Sepuya’s untitled photographs depict Sepuya himself, a window overlooking the sea, and three separate depictions of Moors: two paintings against the same window and what appears to be a cut-out photo of sculpture against a door frame.

These two settings are in obvious reference to the beginning of Woolf’s novel, which opens with Orlando as a young boy, brutalizing the decapitated Moor’s head in his family attic before going to look through a stained glass window.

Sepuya’s work provides a powerful reimagining of this scene by removing Orlando’s presence completely. In doing so, he lets the various depictions of the Moor serve as a ghost-like presence, a haunting reminder of what imperial violence really looks like, and the senseless cruelty of Woolf’s original description.

Multi-media artist Zackary Drucker is a trans woman who contributed three portraits of Rosalyne Blumenstein to the collection. Drucker, who is also a producer on the Emmy award-winning show Transparent, explores gender posturing, dysmorphia, and BDSM culture in her larger body of work.

Zackary Drucker, Rosalyne, 2019, for Aperture

Here, Drucker’s studies focus on Blumenstein, an influential trans activist, and foremother, and likens her to Botticelli’s Venus. Drucker’s work explores the feminine binary and the seductive beauty that comes with it. Drucker also contributed a series of Blumenstein’s own photograph collection to further pay homage to her mentor and muse.

Both Mickalene Thomas and Walter Pfeiffer contributed bubbly portraits of their subjects, pairing nonsensical outfits with even more fantastic set pieces to create hallucinatory dream-scapes with their work.

Thomas’s photographic work has an added layer of transformation due to her use of collage to transform her original images into a distorted and colorful reimagination of reality.

Mickalene Thomas Untitled #3 (Orlando Series), 2019

Thomas’s body of work focuses on the representation of the black body in art, and the four pieces she contributed explore the fa’afafine third-gender community of Samoa boys who are raised as girls. Her primary subject is her partner, Racquel Chevremont, again recalling Woolf’s motivations in writing Orlando as a love letter to Sackville-West.

On the other hand, Pfeiffer’s dream-like portraits of young men presently explore the intersections of feminine presentation and “macho boys” as well as a fascination with youth. This includes an untitled photo of a sleeve stuffed with flowers, resembling the ruffled Elizabethan costumes of Swinton’s male portrayal of Orlando, and a young man wearing a flower crown.

Lynn Hershman Leeson is most known for her elaborate performance art piece Roberta Breitmore. The piece called a “private performance” on her website, spanned five years in which Hershman Leeson opened bank accounts, rented an apartment, as well as saw a therapist as a fictional character.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rowlands/Bogart (Female Dominant), 1982, from the series Hero Sandwich . Hand-painted collage

Hershman Leeson made intricate spreadsheets detailing how Roberta would wear her makeup and physically perform, such as her 1976 work “Roberta’s Body Language Chart.” This piece of performance art poked holes into the presentation of womanhood, an idea that Woolf constantly engages with with her genderless coding of Orlando.

Each on of Elle Pérez’s photographs is a small character study, largely focusing on members of the LGBTQ community. Perez’s work resists any type of set narrative, presenting a black and white portrait as well as a photo of a vial of testosterone for the exhibition.

Viviane Sassen’s series Venus & Mercury is a photographic study of the Palace of Versailles, another strong connection to the intimate study of the European estate present in Woolf’s original text. Sassen later stained her collection of images of classical statues with pigment, sometimes to represent a type of otherworldly aura, sometimes as a blatant placeholder for blood.

Viviane Sassen Venus & Mercury, 2019

Collier Schorr’s untitled series serves as a visual documentary of the trans model Casil McArthur between the years 2015-2018. Schorr met McArthur right as McArthur began his transition. Schorr’s work explores McArthur’s transition from pre to post-op. Schorr also contributed a video installation of the musician Melissa Livaudais playing the guitar made by the sculptor Daniel Oates.

Jamal Nxedlana is a creative director at Bubblegum Club, a publication that focuses on engaging the world with South African youth culture. Nxedlana showed three original photographs for Orlando, a series titled FAKA Portrait. FAKA is in reference to the performance art duo Fela Gucci and Desire Marea.

In an issue of Bubblegum Club dedicated to the duo, the introduction reads: “For the queer, the trans, the non-conforming, the female and the black… there is FAKA.” FAKA, as well as Nxedlana’s portraits, rigorously challenge all forms of the gender binary.

Jamal Nxedlana, FAKA Portraits, Johannesburg, 2019, for Aperture

Lastly, Columbus-based photographer and installation artist Carmen Winant supplied five pieces to the exhibition. Winant’s work, titled A melon a pineapple, an olive tree, and emerald, a fox in the snow, is a series of two-part layerings in reference to Orlando’s encounter with a Russian princess at the beginning of the novel.

The first layer of the series is a 2002 photo of Winant’s breasts marked with faint scratches. Three of photos layered on top of her 2002 work are the original photos Woolf included in Orlando, many of which including photos of Sackville-West herself dressed up as Orlando.

 

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Orlando opens tomorrow at @aperturefnd 🎭

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The remaining two pieces come from a pamphlet about clay working. Both this concept and the layering of multiple images against one constant base suggest the transformative nature of the themes presented in Woolf’s work.

Orlando is on view from May 24 to July 11. The accompanying Summer 2019 edition of Aperture magazine is on sale now.

Buy art the smart way: Hold on to your piece and beware of the internet hype

Jeff Koons’ 1986 sculpture “Rabbit” just sold for  $91.1 million dollars. The work was apart of the collection of the late S.I. Newhouse Jr.

The work worth millions and accompanied by ten other pieces of modern art sold at the auction house Christie’s New York on May 15. The value of Koons’ work broke records for the most expensive work of art sold by a living artist.

 

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A #GoodBunny or #BadBunny? Visit our Rockefeller Center galleries by 15 May and decide for yourself.

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While the sale was impressive, it also showed the newfound intervention of the uber-wealthy into the art buying world. In her article “Even the Rich Aren’t Rich Enough for Jeff Koons,” economist Allison Schrager warns that these big-ticket buys have darker implications for the art market.

Arriving at the conclusion that art is one of the easiest “get rich fast” investments out there plays right into survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is the phenomenon by which people en mass only examine those who have already made it through some type of selection process.

The logical error solely focuses on those who succeed. Additionally, it can lead to dangerously false conclusions with the data provided. Data having to do with the value of investing in the art industry should be taken with a grain of salt.

Most of the time it cannot account for all of the art forgotten in basements, attics, and vast storage spaces of major museums.

The art market itself, while too big for investors to ignore, is incredibly unreliable. In addition to navigating the commission prices of gallerists and auction houses, investors also have to be very careful when it comes to forgeries and rapidly changing tastes.

Furthermore, the commercial market for art has broadened at exorbitant levels due to the internet of things. These new technologies lend increased visibility to rising artists, something that was previously impossible to do without the help of art world elites.

While these factors make the market for investors unstable, it also allows marginalized artists who were historically excluded from mainstream artistic spaces to flourish. Internet technology has also allowed important social spaces, such as art fairs and gallery openings, for beginning collectors to network and begin to get a feel for the present day’s market.

Also, platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr allow artists to have direct relationships with future buyers without the middlemen, like gallery owners or other administrative members of the industry.

These social platforms help the artists’ reach and attract major industry celebrities, such as the works of Alec Monopoly or John BornHowever, this does mean that art markets are more complicated than before because there is less control over how art is received. 

While they have the least amount of access to capital, millennial collectors are considered to be the most adept at navigating digital markets and networking.

The 2016 TEFAF Art Market Report found that online fine art sales had grown at an unprecedented rate in the span of a year, and this trend continues to this day.

Millennial collectors make up the largest demographic of those who purchase through online platforms and also those take the most risk when purchasing art. However, a large part of collecting is dependent on how long you are willing to wait to auction off the pieces you own.

If collectors try and flip an artist’s work too fast, it would make it even more difficult for that artist to sell in the future. Therefore, collectors must play an incredibly delicate balancing game between potential buyers and the art they purchase.

Speaking to Bloomberg Magazine, Swiss collector Uli Sigg’s main advice for beginner investors is to do some intense research about the artist they intend to buy from. If an artist’s work was featured in a major gallery or museum, it has a much greater chance of appreciating in value.

Collectors seem to universally agree that, first and foremost, you must buy the art you like, not the art you think might become the next iteration of Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit.”

Money in the art world is mainly generated by what is called secondary sales, meaning the constant trading of big-ticket pieces between the most influential auction houses. Attempts were made for a certain percentage of the auction prices to go back to the original artists. However, these efforts failed because of intellectual property issues.

The most difficult problem gallerists themselves face is the fact that the value of art is almost entirely subjective. This — for better and for worse — is why the industry has such a complex posturing process between the select few dealers, galleries, and museums who have the ethos to determine the value of certain works.