Lahore-based artist Vania Mazhar is part of a new generation of Pakistani painters expanding the language of their medium into experimental forms. With a practice that moves fluidly between painting, installation, video and sculpture, she builds immersive environments that respond to sites, memory and overlooked traces of history. Alongside exhibiting in museums and galleries across Pakistan, Mazhar teaches drawing at the National College of Arts, grounding her explorations in the daily rhythm of mark-making.

As 2026 takes shape, the art world feels less preoccupied with disruption and more attuned to direction. Rather than chasing what’s next, artists, collectors, institutions and audiences are beginning to ask a more grounded question: what kind of art - and what kind of engagement - do we want to live with?

In the restless creative pulse of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian visual artist Estifanos Solomon emerges as a storyteller with intent. Trained in painting and printmaking, his practice navigates a delicate threshold between personal confession and collective reflection, drawing from lived experience to illuminate what society too often leaves in shadow - vulnerability, conflict and care.

Henrique Matos, a director and photographer born in Lisbon in 1996, has spent the past decade quietly reshaping how we perceive the spaces around us. With a background in philosophy and a current Master’s focus on film and the intersection of arts and sciences, Matos brings a cerebral edge to his visual practice. His work resists easy categorization, oscillating between urban landscapes, human subjects and pastoral scenes, yet always returning to a central impulse: to transform non-places into art.

In a practice that gently dissolves the boundaries between self and environment, artist, writer, and curator Damini Yadav invites us into an evolving conversation between the personal and the planetary. Currently based in Milan, Italy, Yadav’s multidisciplinary work, spanning painting, collage, environmental installations, and performance, emerges from a richly layered cultural journey: born in India, raised in Malawi, and shaped by studies in Bangalore and Milan.

At just 21 years old, Tehran-based photographer Mostafa Shahabi has already carved a distinct path through the Iranian visual arts landscape. Born in Ahvaz in 2003, Shahabi’s early life was marked by a rich engagement with multiple forms of creativity: drawing, painting, music, and literature. Yet it was photography and cinema, embraced at the age of sixteen through the Iranian Youth Cinema Society, that ultimately became the vessels for his artistic exploration.

In the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary art and technological design, Ultravioletto studio - represented by Ambrose Creatives - stands out as one of the most perceptive and forward-thinking forces in experimentation and cross-disciplinary contamination. Rooted in a radically multidisciplinary approach, the studio operates within a hybrid space where architecture, installation, storytelling, and interaction converge through emerging technologies and continuously evolving visual languages.