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.

Barjeel Art Foundation @ Whitechapel

September 1, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

The final show in Whitechapel’s four part exhibition of contemporary art from the Middle East is probably both the most interesting and the most frustrating. Over the past year the gallery has played host to the Barjeel Art Foundation in a bid to introduce Londoners to modern and contemporary art from the Arab world. This […]

Edel Adnan @ Serpentine Sackler

August 17, 2016.Reading time 2 minutes.

The work inside Edel Adnan’s Serpentine show is bright and colourful. It doesn’t scream for joy, but it certainly does not appear to be at all woeful. It comes as a surprise then, that it has been titled ‘The Weight of the World’, a term that comes with a lot of negative connotations. Adnan is […]

Bhupen Khakhar @ Tate Modern

August 7, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

I recently made a late night trip to Tate Modern. My list of things to see was probably half a mile long. The whole museum has been completely re-hung and one probably needs a week to explore it all fully. The display, which impressed me most however, is the current retrospective of late Indian artist […]

Hong Ling @ Brunei Gallery

July 31, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

Two days ago I graduated with an MA in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa. While most people were spending most of their special day posing with their family and friends for photographs, I dragged mine into the Brunei Gallery, which I was lucky to have on campus. On display during the […]

Sursock @ Beirut

July 25, 2016.Reading time 1 minute.

I have just returned from a trip to my mother’s beautiful homeland: Beirut. Of course, no trip would be complete without a visit to a museum or gallery and Lebanon certainly impressed with its stunning Sursock Museum. The Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum is a glittering white palace. When the sun is up its spectacular façade […]