Expo Chicago : Maha Ahmed, Amy Beager, Rebecca Brodskis, Nengi Omuku, Soheila Sokhanvari, Sinta Tantra, Polina Barskaya, Luella Bartley, Bea Bonafini, Eileen Cooper, fuchsia, Jamie L. Luoto, Christina Nicodema, Alexandra Searle, Celina Teague

11 - 14 April

Expo Chicago
Maha Ahmed, Amy Beager, Rebecca Brodskis, Nengi Omuku, Soheila Sokhanvari, Sinta Tantra, Polina Barskaya, Luella Bartley, Bea Bonafini, Eileen Cooper, fuchsia, Jamie L. Luoto, Christina Nicodema, Alexandra Searle, Celina Teague
Maha Ahmed

Maha Ahmed (b. 1989, Pakistan) completed a MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins School of Art, London on the Caspian Art Foundation Scholarship (2015) and a BFA in Miniature Painting at the National College of Arts, Lahore (2012). Ahmed has lived and worked in Lahore, London, Tokyo and is currently based in Dubai. Drawing on feelings of isolation and wonder, Ahmed’s intricate, otherworldly visions of fantastical creatures and distant worlds offer a poignant refection on her personal feelings of unfamiliarity during a period of living and working in Tokyo. Ahmed dreams up imaginary worlds in which her characters - often mythical or hybrid creatures - are in some way at odds with their surroundings. Her works draw inspiration from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts and classical Japanese painting techniques.

Highlights and Collections

Ahmed was finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2023) . Ahmed has also received special commendation for her work by Dentons Art Prize judging panel leading to an acquisition by the David Roberts Art Foundation Collection (DRAF). Maha's work can be found in the A.R.M holding art collection in Dubai.
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- Maha Ahmed, In between it all, 2024
- Maha Ahmed, A theatre unravels, 2024
Amy Beager

Amy Beager (b. 1988) lives and works from her studio in Chelmsford, UK. She obtained a National Diploma in Art & Design (Distinction) in 2007 and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nottingham Trent University in 2010. Beager's painterly language has re-imagined figurative painting with her bold colour juxtapositions; figures rendered in a simultaneously classical yet modern style; and compositions, which are exquisitely romantic and poetic. Parallel to the joyous vivid colour palette and swathes of rich paint and brushwork, the figures often appear restless, fervent, and in a complex tension of ecstasy and anguish. Reminiscent of the dramatic poses of the divine saints from the Renaissance period, these figures hover between the classical and the contemporary. Beager's paintings both celebrate and explore the emotional intensity and intimacy of love.

Highlights and Collections

Amy Beager was awarded with the Ingram Prize 2022 and selected as a winner for the Delphain Gallery open call 2020 after she had started to exhibit her work in London in 2019. Beager's work can be found in the Noewe Foundation, Lithuania; Soho House; the Ingram Collection and placed in multiple private collections globally.
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- Amy Beager, Love Won't Save us All (Tristan and Isolde), 2024
- Amy Beager, Refuge, 2024
Rebecca Brodskis

Rebecca Brodskis (b. 1988 in France) lives and works in Paris. She spent most of her childhood travelling and living between France and Morocco. Brodskis studied painting at the Ateliers des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris and at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London, graduating in 2010. In 2015, she also completed a Master’s degree in Sociology, focusing her research on the themes of vulnerabilities and social crisis. Exploring the borders of the sensible world, Brodskis’ work evolves between conscious and unconscious spaces, leading to a reflection on the existence, the self and the otherness. The idea of being in an in-between is very prominent in Brodskis work, this intermediate space at the cross-roads of empirical reality and imagination, order and disorder, materialism and spirituality, determinism and freedom.

Highlights and Collections

Her work can be found in important private and public collections which include Huma Kabaki collection, Alan Lo Collection (Hong Kong); Museum Azman Collection (Malaysia); Pamela and David Hornik Collection (USA); Selebe Yoon Collection (Senegal); The Bunker Artspace Museum (USA); Tiroche DeLeon Collection (Israel); Zeifang Collection (Germany); Xiao Hui Wang Art Museum, Suzhou (China); W Art Foundation (China); SUSU collection (China); Arndt Collection (Germany/Australia); AMMA Foundation (Mexico) and the RO2 Art Collection (USA).
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- Rebecca Brodskis, Iseut, 2024
Nengi Omuku

Nengi Omuku (b.1987, Nigeria) has completed both her BA and MA at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Omuku’s work is inspired by the politics of the body and the complexities that surround identity and difference. With every journey, she considers how human beings position themselves in space in relation to other beings. Foremost on her mind are the ways in which the body needs to adapt in order to belong. It is constantly selecting and gathering its identity, mentally, physically and emotionally.

Highlights and Collections

Omuku was awarded the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy (April-June 2024), The Black Rock Senegal Residency (2022-2023), The World Trade Organisation Residency in Geneva (2021). Omuku received the Prankerd-Jones Memorial Prize, awarded by University College London (2012), the Nancy Balfour MA Scholarship, awarded by University College London (2011) and the British Council CHOGM art award presented by HM Queen Elizabeth II (2003). Commissions include the Arts Council England commission at Maudsley Hospital, London. Omuku’s work can be found in international private and public collections including: The HSBC Collection, the Bunker Artspace Museum, The Loewe Collection, The Monsoon Collection, The Easton Capital Collection, The Azman Museum, Dawn Art Collection, Ditau Collection, The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, ICA Miami, Black Rock Senegal, The Whitworth and The Baltimore Museum of Art.
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- Nengi Omuku, The Cleanse, 2023
Soheila Sokhanvari

Soheila Sokhanvari is an Iranian-born artist whose multidisciplinary work weaves layers of political histories with bizarre, mysterious and often humorous narratives that she leaves open to viewers to complete. Sokhanvari, a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre (since 2013), received her BA in Art History and Fine Arts from Anglia Ruskin University in 2005, a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2006 and an MFA from Goldsmiths College in 2011. She has recently been the recipient of the Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship at British School at Rome (Oct-Dec 2018) and has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East.

Highlights and Collections

Soheila Sokhanvari has been shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2015, the The Future Can Wait in 2013, in Catlin Prize in 2012, exTRAct, Copenhagen, in 2011 and The Young Gods. Sokhanvari’s work can be found in international private and public collections, including the Government Art Collection (UK), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA), Newark Museum of Art, Newark (USA); National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), The New Art Gallery Walsall (UK), the Bunker Artspace Museum (USA), Easton Capital/John Friedman Collection (USA), Frank Cohen Collection (UK), Benjamin Khalili Collection (USA), Shahriar Maleki Collection (UK) and Saatchi Gallery Collection (UK); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (UK); The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (UK); The Bagri Foundation, London (UK); Dangxia Foundation, (China) The Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (UK).
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- Soheila Sokhanvari, I'm No Angel (Portrait of Mae West), 2024
Sinta Tantra

Sinta Tantra (b. 1979, New York) is a British artist of Balinese descent. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London between 1999–2003 and later continued her studies in art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, graduating in 2006. Tantra describes herself as a painter working on an architectural scale. By using abstract geometric style, exploring colour, identity, and narratives, she questions the function of spaces in her work. Sinta Tantra is highly regarded for her site-specific murals and installations in the public realm.

Highlights and collections

Sinta Tantra’s artworks can be found in international private and public collections, including Government Art Collection UK; Louis Vuitton Collection Southeast Asia; Karachi Biennale; Benetton Collection; Folkestone Triennial, Canary Wharf; Tumurun Museum, Indonesia; Museum MACAN, Indonesia. Tantra is a recipient of many awards including the Bridget Riley Drawing Fellow at The British School at Rome (2017); Shortlisted for the Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize (2015); British Council’s International Development Award (2014); First Prize, Painting and Decorating Industry Award (2012);The Royal British Society of Sculptors AHRBS (2012);Shortlisted for the Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize (2010); British Council Grant (2009); Courvoisir ‘The Future 500’ in partnership with The Observer Newspaper (2009); Arts Council England (2007); and Deutsche Bank Award (2006), The Gordon Luton Award, The Worship Company Painters Stainers Trust (2006); Michael Moser Award (2005); Paul Smith Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Arts (2003-2006) and the Henry Moore Sculpture Fund (2002).
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Polina Barskaya

Polina Barskaya (b. 1984) is a Brooklyn-based Ukrainian-born artist who received her BA in Fine Arts from Hunter College in 2007, and an MFA from Pratt Institute in 2010. Barskaya’s confessional portraits have a diaristic quality to them. Barskaya’s paintings hone in on the psychological intensity of their subjects and tell stories about the human condition. Typically depicting herself, her husband or her child within a domestic space, Barskaya employs windows and light to create a sense of disconnect and isolation within her works. She has recently been the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and has exhibited extensively throughout the US.
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- Polina Barskaya, London Evening, 2023
Luella Bartley

Luella Bartley's (b. 1974, Stratford Upon Avon) work is a personal exploration of vulnerability, intimacy, and conflict around the female experience, specifically related to the body, including works on paper in pencil and oil, photographs and sculpture. These different mediums show the intimate process of the investigation.

Highlights and Collections

Prior to Bartley joining Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery she had presented early investigations into drawing and painting work in collaboration with Miuccia Prada for Miu Miu. Trained at Central St Martins in the early 90s, Luella first worked as a writer at Dazed & Confused, British Vogue, The Face and The Evening Standard.In 1999 she launched her own fashion brand Luella, for which she was awarded an MBE for services to fashion in 2010. She was also awarded with the Designer of the Year Award in 2008 by the British Fashion Council after previously being nominated 2 years in a row. She published a book with Fourth Estate in 2011 and from 2014-16 designed the Marc by Marc collection for Marc Jacobs. Luella collaborated with Raf Simmons and Pieter Mulier for Calvin Klein 2017-2019.
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Bea Bonafini

Bea Bonafini is an Italian Artist born in 1990 in Bonn, Germany. Bonafini did her Foundation course in Art & Design at Chelsea College in London. Furthermore, she holds a First-Class Honours bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Slade School and a master’s degree with a distinction from the Royal College of Art in London. Bonafini is a Barcelona based artist whose interdisciplinary practice draws from oneiric visions overlapping personal and ancient mythologies. Her tactile, intimate worlds centre around sensuality, vulnerability and fantasy, forming swirling scenarios that are fragmented and multi-layered. Bonafini’s work expands the possibilities and interplay of painting, tapestry and sculpture while reinventing artisanal techniques. Acting as protected spheres, Bonafini’s installations create encounters between the earthly and the otherworldly.

Highlights and Collections

Bea Bonafini’s work can be found in various private and public collections such as the Maleki Collection, The Fondazione Monti Collection, Brescia, Italy and The Jonkoping Council Collection, Sweden. Bonafini has been selected for the Alkinois art residency, Athens, Greece (2022); The TAC art residency, Tuscany, Italy (2022); Premio Conai finalist, Rome, Italy (2022) and the Platform Southwark Studio Residency, London. She has been awarded with the ALA Art Prize, First Prize, Naples, Italy (2023); the Pébeo Prize for Painting, Art-o-Rama, Marseille, France (2021-2019); the Abbey Scholarship for Painting, British School at Rome, IT Finalist Talent Prize, Rome, Italy (2021-2020);the Rosa Lee Travel Grant, British School, Rome, Italy; the Finalist Premio Cairo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy (2019); The Fieldworks Studio Residency, London, UK (2017); among more.
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- Bea Bonafini, Waters ferment, 2024
Eileen Cooper RA

Eileen Cooper RA (b.1953, Derbyshire) is known as a painter and printmaker but her work encompasses works on paper, collage, ceramics, and sculpture. She obtained her Master of Arts degree in Printmaking at Royal College of Art in 1977 after completing her BA degree at Goldsmith’s College in 1974. Throughout her career Cooper’s work has contained a strong autobiographical element, yet allegorical and poetic. The concerns and experiences that she depicts are timeless and of universal relevance. A strong colourist and described as a magic realist, Cooper brings an unapologetically female perspective to her subject matter, encompassing sexuality, motherhood, life and death. Her images, simultaneously bold and tender, reveal a range of feeling that is both deeply engrossing and readily accessible, yet very much part of contemporary art practice.

Highlights & Collections

Elected a Royal Academician in 2001, Eileen Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy from 2010-17, becoming the first woman to be elected to the role since the RA began in 1768. In 2017 and 2009 she was nominated as coordinator of the Royal Academy Summer Show. Her work can be found in prominent public and private collections such as Arts Council Collection (UK), British Museum (UK), Dallas Museum of Art (Texas), Kunsthalle (Nuremberg, Germany), The Hepworth Wakefield (UK), The Tate Gallery (UK).
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- Eileen Cooper, Hunters Moon, 2024
- Eileen Cooper, Velvet Sea, 2024
fuchsia

fuchsia (b. 1995, Paris, France) is a mixed media artist currently residing in London, UK. fuchsia received a bachelor degree in Liberal arts from the University of Bristol in 2017, as well as a popular music performance diploma from The British and Irish Modern Music Institute a year later. In 2019 she completed her masters in songwriting and production at Tileyard Education in London. As an artist working primarily with watercolour and oils, she explores concepts of good and evil through carefully selected colour palettes and spiritual iconography. Her technique of placing dynamic brushwork alongside softer, smoother strokes, aims to further put to light the notion of contrast between good and evil, light and dark, our spiritual state and our human state. Her paintings - swaying between abstraction and semi-realism - encourage a philosophical dialogue among the viewer.

Highlights and Collections

fuchsia has received artist residencies at The Sarabande Foundation in London, UK in 2023, JOYA AIR in Almería, Spain in 2022, as well as at the 59 Rivoli in Paris, France in 2021.
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Jamie L. Luoto

Jamie L. Luoto (b. 1987, USA) lives and works in the San Francisco North Bay. Predominantly self-taught, Luoto’s intimate self-portraits explore the ways in which our identity is shaped, both from within ourselves and by society at large. Her current focus is on illuminating the lasting psychological impact of sexual trauma.

Highlights and Collections

Jamie Luoto’s painting We Hunt the Doe was a semifinalist for the Smithsonian Institute’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 2022. Her work has been featured in publications such as Booooooom.com, ArtMaze Mag, and New American Paintings; appeared on platforms such as Juxtapoz and Hyperallergic. Luoto's work can be found in private and public collections globally including Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas, USA) and Il Castello (Nocciano, Italy).
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- Jamie Luoto, Familiar, 2021
- Jamie Luoto, Minds Pass Minds If They Be Occupied, 2022
Christina Nicodema

Christina Nicodema (b. 1987, New York, USA) lives and works in Long Island City, USA. Nicodema completed her bachelor’s in fine arts at Parsons School of Design, New York in 2009. Her paintings delve into the complexities of the food chain and the interplay between violence and empathy across species and cultures. Drawing on digital influences and contemporary imagery, her work challenges traditional notions of truth and reality, presenting distorted yet vivid compositions that reflect the collective subconscious. Through a fusion of traditional and modern techniques, Nicodema explores themes of dominance, hierarchy, and survival, exposing the tension between nurturing and instinctual violence. Her art invites viewers into a dreamlike space where societal anxieties and desires are laid bare, prompting reflection on the human impact on the natural world and the relentless quest for control and gentrification.

Highlights and collections

Nicodema received an artist grant by the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant for painting in 2021. Her work is in the collections of Beth Rudin DeWoody, West Palm Beach, FL, and Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA. Furthermore, writings about Nicodema`s work has appeared in publications by Artnet News, and The Harvard Advocate. She has also held lectures at Harvard University, Cambridge, Abroms- Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham and at the Kutztown University, Kutztown.
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- Christina Nicodema, Amazing #2, 2023
- Christina Nicodema, Sweet, 2024
Alexandra Searle

Alexandra Searle (b. 1992, England) is a London-based sculptor. After studying Fine Art at Newcastle University graduating in 2015, she went on to complete an MFA in Fine Art Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2019 where she was awarded the Nancy Balfour Scholarship and the Henriques Scholarship Prize. Drawing on references to the medical and the mental from her own experiences with anxiety and hypochondria, Searle manipulates and exploits the behaviour of materials in order to physically depict moments of stress, tension and expectation. Her works expose familiar fragilities and aim to dig into the soft tissue of the materials she uses.

Highlights and Residencies
In 2023 Alexandra Searle received the Gibert Bayes Award by the Royal Society of Sculptors. In 2022, she was finalist in the ACS Studio Prize and also the Ingram Collection Prize. In 2020, Alexandra Searle was shortlisted for the ACS Studio Price and received the Ingram Collection Prize. In 2019, Searle received the Henriques Scholarship Prize by the Slade Scholarship Committee. In 2017 and 2018 she received the Nancy Balfour Scholarship by Slade Scholarship Committee. Furthermore in 2018 Searle was the joint winner of the BBA Artist Prize by BBA Gallery.
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- Alexandra Searle, Quell ii, 2023
Celina Teague

Celina Teague (British, b. 1981) received her MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London, in 2007. Prior to this, she studied Fine Art at the Universidad de Bellas Artes in Oaxaca, Mexico, graduating in 2005. Furthermore, Celina received a first-class honours bachelor degree in English and Drama from Trinity College, Dublin in 2004. Teague’s paintings take their cue from current affairs - particularly events that affect the wellbeing of the planet, such as bush fires, rainforest destruction, poaching and climate-change-denying politicians. She is equally interested by the dissemination of information in the digital era and how it affects the way we interpret and handle crisis events. Teague’s work reflects on whether armchair activism is a dangerously false economy or better than no activism at all.

Highlights and collections

Celina Teague has received several awards and residencies including a 2012 Takt Artist Residency in Berlin and inclusion on the shortlist for the 2013 Beers Lambert Contemporary Visions IV. Her work can be found in international collections including the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection.
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Expo Chicago : Maha Ahmed, Amy Beager, Rebecca Brodskis, Nengi Omuku, Soheila Sokhanvari, Sinta Tantra, Polina Barskaya, Luella Bartley, Bea Bonafini, Eileen Cooper, fuchsia, Jamie L. Luoto, Christina Nicodema, Alexandra Searle, Celina Teague

Expo Chicago

Maha Ahmed

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Amy Beager

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Rebecca Brodskis

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Nengi Omuku

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Soheila Sokhanvari

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Sinta Tantra

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Polina Barskaya

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Luella Bartley

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Bea Bonafini

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Eileen Cooper RA

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fuchsia

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Jamie L. Luoto

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Christina Nicodema

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Alexandra Searle

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Celina Teague

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