As guest editor for the first issue of The Magazine Antiques - first of this 250th year of US history - I commissioned essays on past, present and future anniversaries. Together they offer a long view, which feels doubly important in the wake of this weekend’s deeply disturbing events in Minneapolis. Here are a few artists featured in Kellie Riggs’ survey of 2026. “At a time when the flag itself feels either patriotic or propagandistic,” she writes, “this new Americana compellingly expresses an unsettled national material culture.”
Jonathan Wahl, Live Free, Die, 2022
Jonathan Wahl, Sweet Marcel-Folk Apocalypse, 2025
Hugo Nakashima-Brown, Big Triksosanan, 2025
Robell Awake, Safari, 2025
Coulter Fussell, Sky Zone, 2022
Ishi Glinksy, Me RN, 2025
Thank you @dwellmagazine team for recognizing our curatorial work on "Objects: USA 2024." Sammi Reiss wrote some lovely words about us.
It's a great honor to share space with a colleague and friend and with everyone else being celebrated across the country. Congratulations!
We would love to expand our curatorial universe! ☎️📝
Link in bio to read the story
Special thanks to @aseyestudio@kaya.benitez@kaewalker@madmuseum@wihlow@barbaraparisgifford
Well well well OBJECTS: USA 2024 with @randcompanynyc has been up since September, and I have yet to share with everyone that we also made a book. It’s my first book actually, a labor of love with my partner in crime @angelik.wiki . I am so proud of the work we did together, “across time and space,” as Angelik has put it… to create our Seven Archetypes of Objecthood and contextualize them via a 13,000 word essay. It is not organized alphabetically, of course not ! We made our own rules and own groupings and I think you’ll find it exciting. We followed this sequencing with the exhibition design as well, so if you can’t make it to New York, everything to know is also in our book! You’ll also find a foreword from @zestym and @evansnyderman - intro from @glenn_adamson , and artists profiles by me Angelik and @james_zemaitis . Thanks to all you boys for the faith you had in us to put this together !!! And big big big thanks to our editor @minawh !! Couldn’t have done it with out you, thanks for making it shine. and to Phil Kovacevich for translating our concept into such a beautiful book. And and and and and !!!of course thank you to the artists and designers around which this allllllll orbits. Maybe we forever perpetuate this creative ecosystem and make thoughtful shows and books together.
Feels wild to be a part of this legacy!
Published by @randcompanynyc and @augusteditions
You can purchase a copy at the gallery or through the link in bio.
candlesticks are so hot right now
2 nights in Milano x Salmone dei mobiletto will not allow you to see much but if you are w the right people you will live a whole life anway
Friendship rules, I know I am too sentimental and intense even for the gays but what’s also cool is sharing 30 pairs of sunglasses between us
All the fabulous photos in this dump (NOT taken with an iPhone 13mini w two cracked lenses aka my phone) have been snapped by the sweetest and most talented photographer of them all @davidsierra_ !! The first though was taken by @chriswolston (sorry Chrissy I had to lead with that one because I actually look hot) either right before or right after we went back to the big T and my guys lifted me up horizontal in unison without needing to talk it over first (BFA nor the Times decided to use it IT’S OKAY trust me I was just sooooo thrilled to be there - tyyyyyyyy @nickkharamis you are correct in your theory that I’d sure be glad to code switch if I only knew when to do it, I’m workin on it !)
Delighted to have met so many great people in such a short time also, so many lovely chats.
Unrelated but where else can we write w run-on sentences if not in a mediocre but heartfelt instagram caption?
Will update slides w correct tags for all the cute things soon!
Long live lower Manhattan
Some of the 72 hours in nyc last week was rightfully eating fast chinese food, looking at art, and being and singing with friends, all within a few city blocks
I surprised my parents on the eve of International Women’s Day by showing up at the restaurant they chose for dinner. It’s their favorite trattoria for gnocchi fritti and cappelletti in brodo in the small working-class town where they live, about two hours away by car from Florence. Although he’s only met Crumpet once, a few years ago, the owner remembers me but especially my dog when I call ahead to secretly add myself to the reservation. When I arrive, Mario thinks it would be funny to confuse my parents by walking the dog into the dining room without me at first. In their shock, everything starts to make more sense: the third glass of wine on the table, the initially slow and indifferent service… Mario did it on purpose just so we could eat together.
Surprising my parents this weekend was not my idea. It was Massimo’s, who for the second time now has drummed up a late-night-before scheme to get me to Reggio Emilia — or onto the Pullman taking his friends and ultrafans to some away game of the city’s Serie B football team. He has become an important friend and ally in my parents’ third year in Reggio, including them, helping them, connecting them… the generosity astounds me and he is not the only one. In this town live the nicest people on the planet.
Seeing my parents with such ease and frequency and spontaneity is a gift in and of itself, but to witness them so well taken care of means so much more.
My parents have been trying to learn Italian. My father is eager and studies all the time but is shy, while my mother doubts her ability to learn but actually has the ear and the courage to try new words when she is feeling safe. As someone who was mortified and practically silent in my first two years in Italy, I am so proud of them. At lunch the next day, with Massimo, there’s a moment when my mom says the word “contenta,” sort of as a question, asking if it’s the right way to express that she is happy. She is indeed visibly so; the word means content obviously, but also satisfied with oneself, which she ought to be.
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Life is a bunch of benchmarks that seem meaningful but are actually arbitrary. We need them to mean something so they do. Because what is anything for? New years is weird because it has us considering what we’ve done and not done, or if we are with someone or still alone, if we’ve accomplished enough and by whose standards, and what all that’s supposed to mean. who we are rubs up against who we thought we’d become by now and it feels disquieting. On new years we are happy and sad and melancholic and longing and content and also not. And next year we’ll do this different and that different and we’ll be better and do more and blah blah blah and it’s all just so stupid and hopeful and embarrassing. But what does it mean to be alive if you’re not mortified half the time while trying to create meaning out of nothing and find soul blending connections even when they don’t return the feelings and do more and also do nothing because we all deserve to RELAX for god sake but don’t really know how. Lately I’ve been stuck in a place where one minute I feel nothing and the next I feel everything to a level that it topples me. What is that ? I don’t know what next year will bring but I do hope it means my heart will explode in moments I don’t see coming - that people will continue to surprise me and I will surprise myself ( and be kind to myself ) and that I can think about others and care for them and their needs and wishes and desires because I am soooo exhausted being the object of most of my attention. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you know what I mean when I say that (single people will know). I am not complaining - new years does have one questioning their solitude or their general (in)compatibility with others more than most days of the year. But on the flip side for those like me friendship screams the loudest today and I am thankful and blessed and my heart is exploding as I lay in my bed with my dog under the covers licking my forearm until she falls asleep because the fireworks stress her out and she loves me more than life itself. That’s how I feel about most of you. Tonight I zoom out and see it all.
A blurry kiss
An unedited incomplete incomprehensible ungrammatical captionless collection of people moments and things in New York City during armory week. Not a new or interesting take but nyc is magic especially when you’re running on spongies only, hanging with your best oldest most talented most fun friends in the whole wide wide world that give you energy and purpose and remind you of your dreams. We had photo shoots went to openings saw all the art got fed shared meals slept in chic hotels had run-ins w rats sang songs drank cosmos switched shoes broke traffic laws lost nails read tarot took meetings took notes accepted our fates slept in multiple boroughs and ate pizza and caviar. We do not take for granted, we only never forget.
I started saying “bless” ironically who knows how long ago. It’s not ironic anymore. Bless my people my health my life my future.
I think “New York or Nowhere” is a sports thing ? That’s what @angelik.wiki said. I never looked it up and it also doesn’t matter. New York or Nowhere.
Who’s to say I would have written this text any differently had I not received so much negative Reddit “karma” from the “burning man community” lol which I bring up as I enjoy all the recent headlines and memes about what’s happening there now. Just over two years ago when @angelik.wiki and I were writing our giant essay for Objects USA, I naively got on Reddit to ask if anyone would be interested in licensing one of their photos after the “mudpocolypse”. Boy oh boy BIG MISTAKE. I majorly I mean MAJORLY got ripped a new one (including a death threat pretty much) by I want to say upwards of 50 ? Maybe more super pissed and extremely offended pearl clutchers, because as an outsider, how dare I speak about and borrow an image of something I wasn’t there to experience myself (tickets range from $500-3000 for fucks sake for one), even though it was all over the news. I got so so so much continuous hate for hours and even days after I posted 🤪that kind of waterfall of rejection would make anyone feel like a total dumbshit no matter how lame the source. In the end we got the image from a reporter who took a photo of the exodus from a drone (he was cool). But who cares, imo it was an excellent metaphor for our “Doomsdayer” essay (one section out of 7), part of which I’m finally sharing snidbits of only an entire year after the book came out (whoops wow time flys). Maybe it’s spiteful, whatever even diet Prada gets it. I went real real easy on em too; the end of the sentence that gets cut off in my second foto reads “…a gentrified, waste-generating playground for clout-chasers and the rich.”
The essay is good, so is the rest of the book so link in my bio to get your hands on one (if you ask nicely maaaaybe I’ll send you a pdf 🤫who knows )
Artwork that we paired with the exodus is by the fabulous and talented @lilahslagerrose whose work is evergreen in this post capitalist wasteland of a world we live in !
Oh yeah and ~ if you like stuff like this ~ go ahead and google the abandoned Audis in the Mojave desert while you’re at it
