Alia Al Senussi

Princess Alia Al-Senussi, PhD, is an active member of the contemporary art world with a focus on cultural strategy and patronage systems. She is a cultural strategist, writer, patron, public speaker and academic.

Princess Alia has served as Art Basel’s UK and MENA Representative for over a decade, and is also currently Senior Advisor, International Outreach for Art Basel. In 2019 she was appointed Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia, where she focuses on developing international partnerships whilst working on a variety of projects across the Ministry’s commissions and the Diriyah Biennale Foundation. Princess Alia is a visiting lecturer at Brown University’s Watson Institute, working with the Middle East Studies Program.

Princess Alia is currently a member of the Tate Modern Advisory Council (London), the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Delfina Foundation (London), the Board of Trustees of The Showroom (London), the Board of Trustees of FUNTASIA/Elisa Sednaoui Foundation (UK / Egypt / Italy), the Board of Governors of Aiglon College (Switzerland) as well as a member of Therme Advisory Board (Germany) and the UCCA Contemporary Circle (China).

She continues to serve as a founding member of the Tate’s Acquisitions Committee for the Middle East and North Africa, the Board of 1:54 The African Art Fair, and the Middle East Circle of the Guggenheim, the Middle East Studies Advisory Committee at Brown University, the Serpentine Future Contemporaries (and founding committee member) as well as was a founding member of the Board of Patrons of Art Dubai, having played an integral role in the founding of the fair. Princess Alia is also a member of the British Museum committee for the acquisition of Middle Eastern art.

Dr Alia has a PhD in Politics from SOAS (London), examining the nexus of power and cultural patronage, featuring Saudi Arabia as a case study. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in International Relations (honors) and Middle East Studies from Brown University and holds an MA in Political Science from Brown and an MSc in Law, Anthropology and Society from the London School of Economics.

Bindi Vora

Bindi Vora is British-Indian artist working with expanded photography, Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication and Curator at Autograph a London-based non-profit arts charity that explores issues of identity, representation, human rights and social justice through photography. Since joining Autograph, she has curated Eric Gyamfi (2023), Poulomi Basu: Fireflies (2022), co-curated Sasha Huber: You Name It (2022) Care I Contagion I Community ­– Self & Other (2021-2022); Lola Flash: [sur]passing and Maxine Walker: Untitled (both 2019) and contributed to a series of in-conversations with multidisciplinary artists include Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Maryam Wahid, Tobi Alexandra Falade, David Uzochukwu amongst others. She has independently curated Poulomi Basu: Centralia for Recontres d’Arles – Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2020); Let’s Go Through This Again (2018); her writing has appeared in publications by Maryam Wahid Zaibuinnisa (Midlands Art Centre, 2022); Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson); FOAM Magazine and British Journal of Photography, participating in public programmes for Tate, GRAIN Photo Hub, The Photographers’ Gallery amongst others.

Carolina Conforti

With over two decades of experience in the art world, Carolina has worked with the most prestigious auction houses, spoken to world renowned artists and curators, and inspired collectors around the world. The Art Talks is Carolina’s crowning achievement, at the intersection of her love for arts, and her desire to support all those who contribute to a better world with passion, dedication and purpose.

Durjoy Rahman

Durjoy Rahman is the Managing Director of Winner Creations Ltd which he co-founded in 1993. As one of the oldest apparel & textile sourcing companies in the country with offices in Hongkong and Los Angeles, it represents numerous US and European clients for their garment requirements from Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China. From the inception of the company, design and innovation have been its primary focus.

Being an avid art collector for over 25 years, in 2018, Durjoy Rahman founded Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) to promote art and artists from South Asia and beyond in a critical, international art context. Rahman is one of the most significant art collectors in the region with a major collection of South Asian art and significant works by Sunil Gupta, Raghu Rai, Sebastiao Salgado, Munem Wasif, Abir Abdullah etc. As an art foundation, DBF supports artists in creating new artworks and engages art practitioners in relevant exhibitions, publications, and residencies.

Within a short span of time, DBF has supported many cultural projects focused on South Asian and MEASA art practitioners with major organisations including Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai (UAE), Asia Society India Centre, Mumbai (India) and SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (Germany), Kochi Biennale Foundation (India) etc.

DBF has worked closely with organizations including Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Gidree Bawlee Foundation of the Arts, Lightbox Group and many more to nurture critical discourse and explore cross cultural exchange. Albeit the constraints and challenges induced by the Covid pandemic, the foundation has explored new means to support artists in creating and producing new works, engaged with critics and scholars in several exhibitions and publications, and loaned South Asian artworks from the collection to many major museums and exhibitions globally. During the lockdown due to the pandemic, Rahman inaugurated The DBF Creative Studio, located in Baridhara, Dhaka from the need of an alternative space to experience art and creativity on a limited scale while maintaining safety parameters.

Francesca Pinto

Francesca is currently responsible for the global gallery and retail operations of Magnum Photos, the pre-eminent photo agency representing some of the world’s most acclaimed photographers.

Francesca has been working in the arts world since 2011, as Director of Development for The Photographers’ Gallery – the largest public institution in the UK exclusively dedicated to photography – and previously as General Manager for Christie’s South Kensington. She has been lending her photographic expertise as a judge to numerous Awards, including the Bar-Tur Award and the Youmanity Prize.

Before transitioning to the arts world, Francesca enjoyed a successful career in investment banking and private equity, holding senior positions at Morgan Stanley and Permira.

Francesca holds an M Litt in Contemporary Arts from the University of Glasgow and a CEMS Master in Management from HEC University in Paris. Prior to that, she graduated summa cum laude in Business Management from Bocconi University in Milan.

A committed patron of the arts, Francesca is an RSA Fellow and an active supporter of The Photographers’ Gallery, the Design Museum, PEER and AWITA.

Helen Ho

Helen is a contemporary art specialist with more than twelve years’ experience working with collectors of all backgrounds and cultivating relationships with different stakeholders, from artists and gallerists to corporates and institutions.

Currently the Fair Manager of a leading boutique art fair in London, Eye of the Collector, Helen has also been managing dslcollection, one of the most prominent private collections of Chinese contemporary art in Europe since 2010. A key focus in this role is to create content across different digital platforms, including e-publications, newsletters, virtual museum, and social media.

A former specialist consultant to Bonhams London, Helen has an in-depth understanding of business and collector development as well as cultural programming required to develop these specific audiences. She has advised and executed: collectors’ events, touring exhibitions, collection management, as well as general acquisition and sale of artworks. Helen was also responsible for developing VIP/collector engagement programmes as well as partnership cultivation for Photo London.

Helen is a published author of articles on contemporary art and photography and is a respected researcher into contemporary art valuation and market trend analysis.

Helen’s language skills include English (fluent), French (conversant), Mandarin (conversant), Cantonese (conversant), and German (basic).

Jumoke Sanwo

Jumoke Sanwo is a Lagos-based storyteller, cultural producer, and founder of Revolving Art Incubator Lagos. She uses lens-based productions, exhibitions, and social and spatial interventions to create new imaginaries and inclusive frameworks for urban development.

Her work explores the complexities of postcolonial realism and the disappearance of public and social spaces in Lagos. She has contributed to several publications, and online resources including MoMA Post-Notes on Art in a Global Context.

Maria Pia Bernardoni

Maria Pia Bernardoni is a contemporary arts’ curator, international project facilitator and art events’ organizer. With a background in humanities and law, she is interested in human rights and issue of contemporary relevance, particularly investigating the role of photographic representations of identity, culture, spaces, social interactions and genders. Her main interests sits in the organization and promotion of community-based projects’ domain as she strongly believes in the positive socio-economic impact of participatory processes. She has made an impact in the artistic and photographic scene and significant contribution through the promotion of cross-cultural projects and exchanges between Europe and Africa, breaking barriers and stereotypes. Having worked with artists and institutions from several African countries, as curator, consultant and artists’ representative, she has built a trusted reputation, networks and relationships with many African arts practitioners, particularly in West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal). She manages and collaborates with diverse multi-cultural teams and operates in highly diverse cultural environments, adjusting the processes and the programs to local necessities and praxis. She is recognized as one of the leading experts in African photography and is often invited as a conference panelist or advisor on the subject.

Since 2015 she is the curator of international exhibitions for the African Artists’ Foundation and LagosPhoto festival. In this capacity, she has co-curated the exhibition “Day your Lane” at Bozar Museum in Bruxelles and “Tear my Bra” at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2016. She also curated the exhibition “AfricAfrica” at Palazzo Litta in Milan in 2018. She has been part of the curatorial team for the past five editions of LagosPhoto Festival, in Nigeria from 2015 to 2019.

She was the advisor and project manager for the community art project “My Story is a Story of Hope” by the artist Patrick Willocq, in 2017. She conceived and directed the short film “If I Left My Country”, a series of interviews with asylum seekers and french hosting citizens, shown at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Photography Festival in 2018.

She was advisor and production manager for the community photo project “The Art of Survival” by Patrick Willocq, in collaboration with refugee children, commissioned by Save The Children UK, realized in refugee camps in Lebanon and Tanzania.

Since 2020 she is a visiting researcher at the Brighton University, contributing to a project aiming at building innovative and fruitful collaborations between the academy and the contemporary art world.

Michael Hoppen

Michael has been involved in photography in one form or another for over 45 years. Having attained a 1st class BA honor in photography film and television in 1979 at the LCC and studying a year at the Royal College of Art in London, Michael then opened his own studio as a commercial and art photographer, which he closed in 1991. The Michael Hoppen Gallery was born in 1992 and is committed to photography in all its forms, holding regular exhibitions of 19th, 20th and 21st Century photography and exhibiting its artists widely abroad. Over the years, the Michael Hoppen Gallery has exhibited at art fairs in New York, Mexico, Hong Kong, Basel, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Paris and London.

In June 2021, after twenty-nine years spaced over three floors in the heart of Chelsea, the Michael Hoppen Gallery moved to an archive space in Notting Hill. Despite the move and the changes, the gallery continues to be passionate about the photograph and all that concerns this extraordinary art form.

Since 1992, the Michael Hoppen Gallery has worked with many of the great names and estates in photography such Jacques Henri Lartigue, Tim Walker, Man Ray, Sarah Moon, Masahisa Fukase, Bradford Washburn, Daido Moriyama, Lucien Hervé, Shomei Tomatsu, Yoshihiko Ueda, Brassai, Erwin Blumenfeld, Peter Beard, Nobuyoshi Araki, Guy Bourdin, , Richard Learoyd, Eamonn Doyle, Eikoh Hosoe, Ishiuchi Miyako, to name a few, as well as many leading galleries and institutions around the world. The gallery has specialised in 20th C Japanese photography since 2006 and continues to bring new and fascinating artists, such as Sohei Nishino to the attention of museums collectors around the world. The gallery also holds a wide range of vintage material that it continues to add to.

The gallery deals on a regular basis with museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Modern in London, SFMoMA, The Pompidou in Paris, The Albertina in Vienna, The National Gallery of Washington, The Rijks Museum Amsterdam, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Getty in LA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, finding museum quality and rare photographic material for acquisition.

The gallery also advises large and smaller companies on their collections and visual merchandising strategies such as N.M Rothschild, British Airways, GAP, Jupiter Asset management Polo Ralph Lauren, Pfizer, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich and Deutsche Bank, to name a few. We have also been closely involved in developing substantial collections of Japanese material for private collections.

The Michael Hoppen Gallery is also dedicated to the exhibition and publishing of photography. The gallery is also committed to a high degree of excellence and integrity in its practice and to educate and promote the gallery’s core values in the appreciation of all photographic structures, process and disciplines and to what these represent to collectors, collections and academics.

Mon Muellerschoen

Mon Muellerschoen, art historian and art advisor, founded MM-Artmanagement, a service company for private and corporate art collections, after completing her studies in art history. Today she advises corporations such as Hubert Burda Media or Roland Berger and private collectors. Supporting young artists is particularly important to her.

In 2021, she founded the art community Wunderkunst.shop. Mon Muellerschoen gives lectures, curates exhibitions and lives for her passion, art. She is known to a broad public through her weekly art  column in BUNTE magazine.

Nachson Mimran

Nachson Mimran is a father, entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of to.org, Creative Director and Chairman of the Board of The Alpina Gstaad, and Provocateur in Chief of several organisations including Extreme E.

Founded in 2015 by Nachson and his brother Arieh Mimran, to.org is a venture fund, foundation, and collection of creative endeavours, all focused on accelerating Earth’s most vital ventures.

With a passion for nature and humanity stemming from a childhood spent in West Africa and Europe, Nachson leverages his network to address Earth’s most pressing challenges and ensure the future health of people and planet.

Previously, Nachson successfully led the family agro-industrial business in West Africa alongside his brother David Mimran.

Nachson has also developed several real estate projects across Africa and Europe, from hospitality to residential, and serves as Head of International Affairs on the Senegalese Olympic Committee.

Sueraya Shaheen

Sueraya Shaheen is photographer, and founder of SURA Art Advisory. A recognized thought leader and authority on photography, with a sharp focus on the Arab World, she co-founded Tribe, a nonprofit publication and platform. As Photo Editor of the magazine, published bi-annually, she focuses on Photography and Moving Image from the region.

Currently editing a book that features black and white photography, she continues to work as a professional photographer herself building an extensive archive of artists portraits.

Talenia Phua Gajardo

Talenia is the head Art & Design Hunter and CEO of The Artling. She is a Loke Cheng-Kim
Foundation scholar and received her BA (Hons) Architecture from Central Saint Martin’s in
London. In 2013, as she was working on various interior design and architecture projects, she
discovered that there were no aggregated online platforms to discover contemporary art in the
region; The Artling was thus founded to fill this gap in the market. Prior to The Artling,
Talenia founded her own interior architecture and design practice which she started after
working for Zaha Hadid Architects for several years in London.

Talenia’s life passions are intertwined with the world of contemporary art, architecture and
design. She has served as design judge for Dezeen’s Awards, was on Hong Kong’s Design Trust
benefit committee for three consecutive years and was a Milken Institute Young Leader Circle
member. She has also spoken at numerous international conferences and has been part of
panels for UBS, DBS, The Milken Institute, Facebook, SuperReturn Asia, Dezeen, Art Basel
and STPI.

Besides The Artling’s digital platform, they also offer end-to-end consultancy and sourcing
services for both private and corporate clients. Working with private collectors, interior
designers, architects and property developers, The Artling assists with developing art themes
and narratives, guiding concept design processes, and sourcing and commissioning site-specific
artworks.

Their portfolio of esteemed clients include the likes of LVMH, Google, GIC, JLL, Pontiac
Land Group, Frasers Hospitality, Just Co, Shiseido and many more.

TheArtling.com, now lists over 4,000+ designers, artists and galleries from all over the world,
with new artworks and design items added to the site daily. The Artling works internationally
and is headquartered in Singapore, with offices in Shanghai and Zurich.