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.

Alfred Basbous @ Sophia Contemporary

March 21, 2017.Reading time 6 minutes.

Just over 30 miles outside of Beirut lies the village of Rachana, which is completely covered in sculpture. Models are scattered everywhere, in front of houses, in public spaces and on the road. The town was the birthplace of Michel (1921-1981), Alfred (1924-2006) and Youssef Basbous (1929-2001), three brothers all of whom were sculptors who […]

Gallery Girl meets SPILT MILK

March 15, 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

In the first of a monthly series of interviews with my art girl crushes, I have the pleasure of presenting you to Lauren and Nadia, the duo behind Spilt Milk. The art and coffee loving pair are raising funds to open a pop-up Art Cafe that will provide London-based artists with a social space in […]

Arab Women Artists Now @ Rich Mix

March 8, 2017.Reading time 11 minutes.

Arab women are typically perceived as repressed females. They are often misinterpreted as being subordinate to men, lacking the same freedoms as their western counterparts. However, more often than not, it is Arab females, not men, who are the pioneers of the burgeoning Middle Eastern art world. Biennials, galleries and exhibitions across the region are […]

Do Ho Suh @ Victoria Miro

February 24, 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

How does one define home? Is it a place? Is it a feeling? If it is a physical space, what in its very physicality elevates it from a building to a location filled with sentiment? Can a place of residence evolve into a home immediately or does a dwelling become a realm of feeling over […]

The Ocean Can Be Yours @ Gerald Moore

February 16, 2017.Reading time 10 minutes.

The ocean can be yours. Can it? Visas, passports and border control may argue otherwise. Air travel is a modern phenomenon, the first commercial flight crossed the skies in 1914, before then however, voyages traversed oceans by ship. Who owns the sea? This is a question that our ancestors have been arguing about for centuries […]