Studio106LA

no final answer an ongoing unfolding The show is also, quietly, an invitation. Salt Traces works in asynchronous ways, but also through participatory formats —workshops, reading sessions, writing circles, where the boundary between audience and author tends to dissolve. Liminal space is the space where uncertainty, curiosity and experimentation gives birth to creation. no final answer an ongoing unfolding Visit @salttraces on @studio106la

The online show gathers material from Salt Traces sessions, workshops, and the people who joined them, temporarily and tenderly, unfolding as something collective happening sometime ago. Stories submitted by participants, featured in a newsletter, sit alongside the collective’s own practices. Neither is the centre. Neither is a footnote. What’s in it REALLY? memories of water inherited recipes (missing pages welcome) imagined realities Caspian Sea Community gathered and dispersed alphabets in transition —forming stories that last things learned from water things learned from land things learned from grandmothers no final answer an ongoing unfolding Visit our online show to keep on learning with…

How to follow salt traces without the map... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ....................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~............................................................................ ............................................................................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~.......................... ................................................................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~......................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~......................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ You can follow a recipe. You can follow directions. You can follow a map from A to B, arriving precisely where you meant to go, and still having missed everything in between... Salt Traces doesn’t offer you a map. Instead, it offers you a unfolding path of stories— extended, living, unhurried, and deliberately unfinished. With a pinch of salt, like it is noted in grandmother’s recipe. This is meant to be a curatorial text, an announcement of the show. But instead—we keep it to be an open invitation. This online show lives on Studio106 as a long scroll (not mindless, but viscerally inviting to be present)— a form that refuses the click, the chapter, the tidy resolution. Storylines here arrive in fragments. Memories overlap and unfold in visual garments. A coastline appears, then a kitchen, then a copybook in a handwriting you almost recognise. The Caspian Sea — recurring, brackish, half-imagined —holds it all together the way salt holds a dish: invisibly, essentially. Nourishing us. Explore our new online show.

How do you follow salt traces without a map? You can follow a recipe. You can follow directions. You can follow a map from A to B—arriving exactly where you meant to go, and still missing everything in between. Salt Traces offers no map. Instead, it unfolds as a path of stories—living, extended, unhurried, and deliberately unfinished. Like the “pinch of salt” in a grandmother’s recipe: felt more than measured. This online show lives on Studio106 as a long scroll—not mindless, but visceral, inviting presence. It refuses the click, the chapter, the tidy resolution. Here, storylines arrive in fragments.
A coastline, then a kitchen.
A copybook in handwriting you almost recognise.
Memories overlapping through visual garments.
 The Caspian Sea—recurring, brackish, half-imagined—holding it all together the way salt holds a dish: invisibly, essentially. The show gathers materials from Salt Traces sessions, workshops, and the people who joined them—temporarily and tenderly. Stories submitted by participants sit alongside the collective’s own practices. Neither is the centre. Neither is a footnote. What’s in it REALLY? memories of water inherited recipes (missing pages welcome) imagined realities Caspian Sea Community gathered and dispersed alphabets in transition —forming stories that last things learned from water things learned from land things learned from grandmothers no final answer an ongoing unfolding Salt Traces continues through workshops, reading sessions, writing circles—spaces where the boundary between audience and author dissolves. If the show leaves a residue, follow it.
 Find it alive somewhere on Substack: schoolofcommons/p/carefully-following-the-salt-traces salttraces.substack.com Collective: Salt Traces Platform: Studio106 Format: Online long-scroll storyline— participatory and unfolding #SoCAlumn #SaltTraces #Studio106 #OnlineExhibition

If you haven’t read it yet, land on Drain magazine website—our shows are featured there. This is an especially important as our main platform now is our virtual space. And the theme of emergence touches us directly. In the preface, the editor of the issue, Gregory Minissale, writes: In philosophy and science, emergence is a way of understanding how interactions between complex processes can produce unexpected and innovative outcomes. This approach has been very useful in reconceptualizing creativity and artistic practices as interactive behaviors involved with complex social and material entanglements. ‘Emergence’ suggests that artworks can arise, like hope, spontaneously from complex interwoven events in the world. Yet, somehow, these artworks are not reducible or precisely traceable to these events. How is this emergence to be understood? Explore this theme in our piece about the Studio106LA is called Interstitial Practice in the Digital Turn —/interstitial-practice-in-the-digital-turn/

Here is a piece about Studio106LA’s shift to an online space in 2020, in the context of COVID-19 and the way our virtual exhibition space has flourished since then—opening up to more than 18 online shows. Since summer 2020—it has been expanding horizons of imaginary spaces, themes, and geographies. It became a space accessible at the tip of a finger—remaining immersive and adventurous, flourishing with experiments, styles, and forms of expression. In this context, the editor of Drain Mag—a refereed online journal published biannually and this year edited by Gregory Minissale, Professor of Art History (PhD Advisor) at The University of Auckland, New Zealand—was particularly interested in Studio’s work because it underscored and embraced the emergence of this virtual format. In the preface, Gregory writes: In philosophy and science, emergence is a way of understanding how interactions between complex processes can produce unexpected and innovative outcomes. This approach has been very useful in reconceptualizing creativity and artistic practices as interactive behaviors involved with complex social and material entanglements. ‘Emergence’ suggests that artworks can arise, like hope, spontaneously from complex interwoven events in the world. Yet, somehow, these artworks are not reducible or precisely traceable to these events. How is this emergence to be understood? Here is the piece about the Studio106LA: Interstitial Practice in the Digital Turn —/interstitial-practice-in-the-digital-turn/ Read all of the pieces of Emergence Issue – Vol. 20: 1 (Jan. 2026) here: /emergence/ The issue was also edited by Itsnatani Humaira Anaqami, Jack Kramer.

And as we introduced October and announced the archiving of the most recent show, let us now introduce the next one in a row 🩵 But first, a tiny preface ✅ In the summer of 2025, Studio106LA’s online exhibition made its way—virtually, of course—to the Caspian Sea, showcasing the artistic research of Lena Pozdnyakova and Eldar Tagi, artists from Kazakhstan and longtime friends of our gallery, merged with the work of scientists from Eurasia, Central Asia and the UK. This project continues the spirit of our online initiatives that began with COVID-19, when we learned that if people couldn’t come to the gallery, the gallery could simply travel to them. Back then, we had the joy of collaborating with UCLA’s International Institute and the School of Arts and Architecture. We’re delighted that this tradition of bringing together art, science, and awareness of pressing issues keeps unfolding with time—like a well-loved story that keeps finding new chapters. So welcome Carried by the Receding Tide—an online exhibition and an awareness show about changing environments of the Caspian Sea. Following our quarterly routine, the show is going to run for 3 months and you will have plenty of time to explore it. Land on @studio106la webpage to dive deeper into the ecological stories of Caspian Sea.

With a month of October, we are opening a new online show on the Studio106LA virtual space. SensingOtherWise by @sarah.drapeau_ is going to be available for you as part of our archived content—just as immersive as it was a week ago 🫶🌱 To find it, type our url/past and click on “view.” This show that we have hosted for the past couple of months, is at once a personal narrative and a profound meditation on the intersections of self-knowledge, collaboration, cooperation, and commoning. As Sarah writes, “This is already a research happening and living in me, anyway.” The exhibition takes this sentiment—the personal as embedded within the relational—and extends it into a visual dramaturgy: dynamic, nonlinear, inquisitive, and gently probing complex and often difficult themes. In this online exhibition, Sarah’s work (images, fragments from her text, videos, and documentation of her collaborative work) leads us into a visual terrain where the deliberate and the instinctual converge. “This is like taking a picture of a movement,” she notes. And indeed, the show negotiates a fluid boundary between structure and spontaneity—offering compositions that are at once architectural and organic, mysterious and familiar, rare and common, personal and public. Her layered approach reveals itself in fragmented yet interconnected gestures: marks that echo both the tools of nature and those we invent; vivid fields of environmental color alongside tonal gradations that foreground the human hand. These subtle transparencies hint at a scaffolding of structure, while also evoking the ephemeral qualities of memory, experience, and continuous learning—learning that is internal yet always entangled with surrounding elements, actors, and influences. The digital space becomes an ideal setting for this interplay. Free from physical constraints, still images shift and reorient, while moving images breathe life into the notion of process and transformation. The result invites slower, more contemplative encounters. As Sarah’s work and words suggest, the aspiration lies in sensing OtherWise: sensing other wise, sensing, other, wise. The show was organized with support of @schoolofcommons

In this online exhibition, Sarah’s work @sarah.drapeau_ —comprising images, text fragments, videos, and documentation of collaborative projects—guides us into a visual terrain where the deliberate meets the instinctual. Her practice navigates a fluid boundary between structure and spontaneity, personal and public, intimate and shared. To explore the flow of events, fragments and findings that the project exposes within those liminal terrains, visit our webpage. In collaboration with @schoolofcommons and its alumn* community. Put together and curated by Lena Pozdnyakova @ttapogii #introspection #awarenessproject #awareness #visualart #onlineexhibition #artonline #experience-art #artforchange #dance #onlinecollaborationtools

As we mentioned, cooperation between SoC @schoolofcommons and our studio inevitably brings forth a set of questions related to co-learning, co-existing and commoning. Drawing from Sarah’s work during the SoC participation and her contribution to Issues, we feel like it would be helpful to introduce you to some of her ideas in more detail. The workshop Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity took place in February 2024 in the framework of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” Exhibition, Performances, and Workshops by the  @schoolofcommons 2023 Cohort. Sarah proposed an invitation to co-create a brave space for collective sharing - using tools such as mapping in space and embodied techniques, participants were guided to explore a range of prompts, encouraging the sharing of experiences, strengths, fears, and challenges. The session explored the complexities of learning and growing together, tackling themes of giving up, taking breaks, navigating losses, and learning from failures. We addressed the personal and intimate dimensions within projects, exploring tools and structures necessary for continued growth. The workshop provided a reflective atmosphere for participants to engage in transdisciplinary discussions, fostering a deeper understanding of collaboration, resilience, and the dynamics of collective and individual growth. To see more about the project Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity : >> link in bio @sarah.drapeau_ 1. Different people of @schoolofcommons sharing challenges, griefs, tools during the workshop Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity by @sarah.drapeau_ , Zurich, Feb 2024 - credits : @gabrielhensche 2. Cards-Guides for the workshop Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity by @sarah.drapeau_ , during @schoolofcommons , Feb 2024, Zurich - credits : @chan_lue

Intertwined, connected, branching out—togetherness and uniqueness of each part of the system that we are in unity. Visit Sarah Drapeau’s @sarah.drapeau_ show “Sensing (Other)Wise” by landing on our studio’s webpage. Curated by Lena Pozdnyakova @ttapogii Created with support from the @schoolofcommons School of Commons in Zürich. Image credits: 1) Magnified moss and lichens, Sweden residency @bkn.bjorko.konstnod with @_m.o.s.s.s ©Sarah Drapeau; 2) Inner and outer landscapes, workshop-performance of @_m.o.s.s.s at Konvooi Art Festival, Brugge, 2022 ©photo from Mo Terkessidis and Victor Van Hoof’s video Thank you !

Sensing (Other)Wise is an online show that we have curated together with the @schoolofcommons alumn* network. Land on our webpage to explore it🧚 The visual story speaks to Sarah Drapeau’s @sarah.drapeau_ exploration of sensing the world that we share, with the journey of engaging with it driven by intuition and curiosity. Rooted in her contribution to Issues 2024, “Hybrid Tools for Transdisciplinarity,” this exhibition builds on a reflection that is as intimate as it is expansive. The original text blends moments of autobiographical reflection, contemplation on the notions of work and learning, with a deep exploration of collaboration, shared agency, and the ethics of commoning embedded in the surrounding environment. It is reminding us that any inquiry often begins from within and is taking a form of quiet observation and gentle engagement. Taking this nuanced position as a generative point of departure, the exhibition becomes a space where care, mutual responsibility, and ecological sensitivity invite the viewer to witness both—Sarah’s interaction with the surrounding expressed by the collection of glimpses and her thoughts on various topics, interweaved with the show’s dramaturgy. Rather than presenting fixed answers, those visual and textual glimpses engage us in a quiet, open-ended dialogue between fragmented imagery and our own interpreting—tracing nonlinear paths through complexity. The show is inviting rather slow attention, and underscores nurturing forms of engagement with the world around us, grounded in trust and self exploration. Visit @studio106la webpage to sense otherwise. The show is on display for the next several months.