Author: Lizzy Vartanian Collier

Lizzy Vartanian Collier aka Gallery Girl is a writer and curator based in London. Her work has been featured in publications including Dazed, Hyperallergic and Vogue Arabia. She was curator of Perpetual Movement during AWAN Festival 2018 and in 2019 had a residency at the Lab at Darat Al Funun in Amman, Jordan. She has also worked with Armenia Art Fair for its inaugural edition and previously worked as an editor at I.B.Tauris Publishers. In 2019 she co-founded Arsheef, Yemen’s first contemporary art gallery. She has given workshops at Manara Culture in Amman, Jordan and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK. As of 2020 she is currently in law school, with the ambition of greater understanding the intersection between art and the law.

Gallery Girl meets Luska

February 15, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.

Semi-nude and not quite smiling, Luska’s characters stare out at their audience, as though they know something that they’re never going to reveal to you. They are often painted in strained, contorted positions; sometimes smoking a cigarette, and occasionally they may be accompanied by a crow. It’s almost as if they are haunting you or, […]

Banshee presents Gallery Girl: Women Supporting young Artists in the Middle East

February 11, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.

On Tuesday 5th February Banshee Publications invited Gallery Girl to host a panel at London’s Library Club. With the aim of discussing how women are supporting young artists in the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as its diaspora, I was joined by artist Moza Almatrooshi, curator Lorén Elhili and deputy editor of […]

Grace Wales Bonner @ Serpentine

February 6, 2019.Reading time 9 minutes.

Breath the air of those brave ancestors; They were ladders to new worlds – Ben Okri In Old English, a shrine is the word used for a cabinet, chest or reliquary – i.e. a container for holy relics. In contemporary society, a shrine is more often associated with a holy place, marked by a building […]

Twin @ The Store X

January 30, 2019.Reading time 6 minutes.

“Art” does not always appear on walls. In fact, for the grand majority of “artists”, their “artworks” are not displayed on gallery walls or on plinths inside grand institutions until they have struggled through many years of working to establish themselves as “artists.” At this point, you might ask yourself what constitutes an “artist”? Must […]

Art in Translation

January 23, 2019.Reading time 8 minutes.

Being a native English speaker in the art world is something many of us take for granted. At fairs, openings and screenings across the globe, the presentations and supporting text is nearly always in English. On the odd occasion that it isn’t, it will almost undoubtedly be translated or interpreted for Anglophone viewers, but why? […]