“Why do we feel that we belong in some places and not in others?” asks Lise Johansson, an award-winning photographer based in Copenhagen. The artist is interested in our relationship with spaces: how do they shape our identities? What influence do they have on politics, culture and social life?

Multidisciplinary artist Wei Ting Chen was born in Taiwan and is based in Tokyo. His award-winning practice includes video art, performance and sculpture, along with paintings using acrylic and oil pastel, which are often accompanied by poems that correspond to the visual parts of a piece.

Bai Liu is an artist, designer, illustrator and writer based in China whose multidisciplinary work is shown throughout the world. 馍  / Mo was shown at the London Design Festival in September. Why Do We Love Cats?  launched on VRChat in August.

Vinitte Chen is a Shanghai-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice is influenced by an upbringing in two countries: China and Canada. Various natural landscapes, cultural norms and artistic edification shape her interactive pieces, many of which explore the complex dualities found
in nature and human relationships.

Tony Wang is a photographer and filmmaker currently studying for a Photography BFA at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His latest film projects involve a collaboration between the camera and the art of dance.

Hyera Lee is an artist and enlightened spiritual guru based in South Korea. For the past 16 years she has helped to heal the pain of many of her students and has been leading them towards enlightenment. She uses painting to assist the students who struggle to accept their egos without judgement.

Ilina Mustafina is a New York-based artist, photographer, and architectural and fashion designer whose works have an organic, authentic and spontaneous focus. Her pieces are softly compelling, offering an innate understanding of light, colour, shadow and structure.

Brussels-based neurodiverse abstract expressionist Cecile Lobert addresses consciousness in its raw form. Nonverbal and an outsider to conventional development, her impromptu style is best known for its emancipation from normative methods – challenging viewers to empathise with their true selves, untouched by their histories and upbringings.

UK-baed JR CHUO is is a paper cut and spray paint artist whose work explores the notion of façades in society that conceal harsh realities. His work is inspired by the tragic beauty and striking colours found in dying coral. CHUO cuts all of his designs by hand – thousands of individual shapes work in harmony to form large, seamless designs.

Dina Furrer is a Dutch photographer and visual artist based in Tilburg. Her varied portfolio largely comprises still lifes and landscapes; richly detailed works show bold experimentation with colour. Inspiration comes from within the artist herself as well as nature and everyday life.

Gao Hong is an established artist based in China. He started painting using oil and in recent years his focus is the use of ink, in which traditional Chinese materials are combined with modern techniques. City and rural life, development and tradition, and survival and death are key themes.

German artist Natalie Truchsess has an extensive background in analogue documentary,  landscape and portrait  photography. In her current work she uses abstract photographs to explore the depiction of the subliminal, the unspeakable and the ephemeral.

Derrick Breidenthal is an award-winning American artist based in Kansas City. He uses painting to communicate themes of peace, power, struggle and renewal. The artist is currently participating in the group exhibition Fresh Perspectives at Walker Fine Art, Denver until 12 March and his work has been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2022.

Deborah Moss is a New Zealand-based artist interested in expressing an intimate connection with the natural world and its transcendent quality through colour and emotive mark making to convey the sensation of being immersed in a place.

Thomas Witzke is a German painter, photographer and digital artist. He focuses on the narrative aspect of colour; this is perhaps best expressed in the L’art pour L’art series, in which the viewer is invited to explore rooms in museums and artists’ studios.

Erik Paul is a California-based sign maker, graphic designer, painter, sculptor and engineer; the technical and creative aspects of printmaking are a particular passion. This approach has fuelled a varied, joyful career in which the experience in one medium has helped to inform another.

Houda Bakkali is a multidisciplinary artist based in Spain. Her colourful, vibrant compositions are created using a variety of new digital illustration and graphic design techniques and reflect the optimism of their creator. Bakkali’s work has been exhibited at numerous art fairs and exhibitions around the world.

Originally from China and based in the USA, Suyu Chen holds an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her jewellery and wearable objects are inspired by living in different places and experiencing relationships through the lens of her cultural background.

Tianyuan Hu is a student at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her practice explores alienation, traversing spaces between “the lucid and the lunatic.” The Amorph series expresses these themes as drawn from observations during lockdown.

Tsai-Ling Tseng is an award-winning and recognised Taiwanese artist with a studio practice based between Taipei and Brooklyn. She has been awarded with admission into highly selective artist residence programmes such as Anderson Ranch Arts Center, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Minneapolis-based painter Owen Brown holds degrees from Yale College and the University of Chicago. His works are known for their luminosity, colour range and ebullient geometries. He notes: “outrage can guide my brush towards the figurative; at other times I am captured by the language and longing of abstraction.”

Rui Sha is an artist with a focus on sculpture and new media. A background as a furniture designer in her native Beijing and an MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago have influenced her art practice. Video and nature soundscapes are combined with objects fabricated with natural materials to become carriers of emotional expressions.

Yuko Mizobuchi is a “neo-primitive” Japanese artist. Shew has recently opened the BrainBrunnGALLERY in Tokyo – a space built around freedom of imagination, where viewers are encouraged to have primitive, innate responses to art, unrestricted by the uniformity of white wall galleries.

Toronto-based artist Joan Andal Romano questions public and private domains – what to share with the world and what to keep as hers alone. Vulnerability is at the core of her practice. She reads magazines from back to front and also views people in this way; when her mindset is free and heart is open, strangers become friends and indifference to encompassment.

Martin Veigl is an award-winning Austrian artist. His compositions offer collaged portraits with an intuitive blend of colours and forms; a complementary colour palette draws attention to anonymous figures as they are caught in states of transition. Veigl has exhibited widely and his solo show is at Schnitzler Lindsberger Galerie, Graz until 10 April.

Miroslavo is a Czech painter based in Barcelona. A varied background drives him to explore new techniques, colour combinations and tools in the creation of highly expressive canvasses, each offering a bold point of view.

Michael Matzko is a Cincinnati-based photographer. As the first segment of a larger project On Being Human, which asks the fundamental question: “What does a healthy world look like?” Matzko began working on a series during the Covid-19 lockdown, entitled The Self Isolation Project.

Buenos Aires-born, London-based artist Jazmin Donaldson explores storytelling within painting. Key influences include the richly-textured world of fairy tales and myths – she re-purposes known motifs to tell contemporary stories. Donaldson is particularly interested in women’s role in society.

Abstract artist Paul Brown expresses a love of colour, line and layers through his varied practice. In each piece, he adjusts the space on the canvas, offering endless vibrant possibilities and interactions between shapes. The works delve into the subconscious – seeing an image through to its resolution.

Milan-based Debora Barnaba originally studied drawing and painting. She later embraced photography, for which she has won numerous awards. Her images express the power of self-portraits, with bodies that are controlled and subverted in favour of the photographic lens.

Danielle Becknell’s eclectic and diverse practice is driven by personal experiences that become the narrative. The creation of each artwork is a healing gesture – an intuitive expression of physicality shaped by perspectives of nature and unprocessed elements intended to both release and replenish.

France-based Salomé-Charlotte Camors questions our individual responsibility for environmental and social issues. Undertaking extensive research, she then utilises conceptual photography to go beyond an image – to crystallise the interactions constitutive of our identity and conception of reality.

Sandra Zanetti is a multidisciplinary artist who exhibits internationally. Her work explores humanity’s relationship with reality by examining the shift of the human condition in relation to technological advances.

Brussels-based artist and composer Bob Vanderbob explores the interaction of art, science and science fiction to conjure up Artificial Mythology, a modern mythscape conveying a poetic vision of the techno-human condition.

Yara El Turk is a Lebanese interior designer whose art series Metamorphosis of Reality focuses on mystery by using different materials, which emanates the idea of a persistent mutation of thoughts and emotions.

British artist Bettina Newbery paints fine oil portraits inspired by fashion and popular culture. The past year has seen the creation of works rich in geometric evolutions, portraying modern women.

Lance Chang uses distortion and blur to enhance the movement and dreamlike quality of his photographs. Resembling the waves of the aurora borealis, his art taps into beautiful and, at times, foreboding worlds.

Through video works Heesoo Agnes Kim plays upon the notion of dreams and deals with issues of identity and the social influences that affect how a personality is constructed.

Montréal-based Anne-Marie Giroux seeks to create a correlation between body, material and movement, “drifting” from shape to colour with fluidity.

Reggy Liu is a Chinese artist based in London. Her oil paintings and screenprints are about “Masquerade,” an issue combining art with neuropsychology – achieved through multidisciplinary practices.

Through site-specific, large-scale installations, Icelandic sculptor Gudrun Nielsen addresses human impact within contemporary cityscapes.

Marcus Callum’s realist portraits are part of an acclaimed portfolio which has granted him a number of prizes and scholarships.

Yuko Mizobuchi has exhibited work at numerous shows throughout her native Japan and is preparing for the Tokyo International Art Fair, 7-8 June.

For Belgium-based American artist Matthew J. Frock, balance provides the central theme of his meditative, colour-laden paintings.

Based in the USA, Xiaojie Liu is a Chinese illustrator whose work addresses changing emotions towards living in an ethnic autonomous prefecture in China.

Zurich-based Nicolas Vionnet’s sculptural works play with perspective and space – referencing everyday processes and materials.

Fascinated by the distortions occurring in the movement of water, Peter Goodhall is challenged to capture fleeting moments in oil on canvas.

We catch up with Sydney-based collage artist Harriet Moutsopoulos (aka Lexicon Love), who tells us about the new approach to her art practice.

Through his paintings, Vienna-based David Hinterkörner searches for the ideal combination of structure, colour and emotion.

The pillars of London-based Natalia Nosova’s art practice include the incorporation of gestures and an expression of women’s roles in the world.

Xiaowei Chen works in the USA and China. We discuss her solo exhibition Endless Pointsat AroundSpace Gallery in Shanghai until 30 December.

Patricia Abramovich’s paintings, textile design and wearable art are inspired by the merging of colour and the rhythms of a meditative process of painting.

Donghwan Ko lives and works between London and Seoul, exploring notions of home and the spaces inbetween.

New York-based Changyeon Lee’s practice specialises in kinetic sculpture through the use of mechanical components and natural objects.

Milan-based British artist Denholm Berry approaches portraiture with an innovative and unconventional methodology.

We speak with Sydney-based Harriet Moutsopoulos, a collage artist working under the name Lexicon Love; she seeks out the unexpected connections between humour and tragedy.

American artist Matthew Adam Ross, based in Los Angeles and New York, considers his practice to be a line of enquiry. We speak with him to find out more.

Meng Zhou’s artistic projects draw on analogies of Chinese cultural history and myth. We speak with him to find out more about his past and current work.

We speak with the UK-based multidisciplinary artist Harry Bunce about the British countryside, his latest work and looking forward to the rest of 2018.

Jane Gottlieb’s latest solo show is at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, until 29 April. We speak with her about the exhibition.

Swedish artist Marie Åkerlund’s subtle works revolve around the fragile, ethereal and essential notion of inspiration. We speak with her to find out more.

Structurally complex and intricately designed, these unique pieces call upon environmental consideration. Through the inspiration of natural forms, glass is transformed as a material through which to re-enliven Art Nouveau.

London-based Ming Lu is a multidisciplinary artist who combines contemporary techniques with an examination of social and cultural expectations.

In her series Who in the www am I? Lee explores questions of identity in the digital era, through a character called Alice.

Vienna-based artist Charlotte Pann focuses on the phenomenon of relation as a base for and as a result of spatial constellation.

Blending the past with contemporary contexts, Dave Weindorf’s work offers a sense of conceptual and compositional movement.

Paul Biddle is an award-winning surrealist photographer who often makes use of found objects, or photographs of objects from museums.

Linda Kosciewicz’s work explores female identity, emotion and transience through constructed worlds, self-representation and performance.

Michael Wagner focuses on the concepts of identity and celebrity, with each piece exploring the allure of the person behind the composition.

Yuko Mizobuchi is a Tokyo-based multimedia artist. She works primarily with permanent paint markers, watercolour ink, Japanese Sumi and carving on wood board.

Trained as an architect, Portuguese artist Cristina Rodrigues combines social concerns, ethnography and gender relations in her practice.

Dominican Republic-born Mariojosé Angeles has exhibited internationally. The expression of his Caribbean identity is a key objective of his work. 

Amy Hughes is a New York-based British painter. Her work considers relationships between body and mind – we speak with her to find out more.

Anne Hoerter examines new ways to exhibit botanical forms; she is also developing her portrait portfolio. We speak with the artist about her practice.

British-Thai Tuck Muntarbhorn is an artist, curator and contemporary art collector. We speak with him about how his approach to life underpins his art practice.

In her abstract paintings, Ruba Badwan explores deeply-held emotions. We speak to the Abu Dhabi-born artist about her work.

Hawk Alfredson is a New York-based artist born in Sweden. He has worked exclusively in oil for 40 years, exhibiting in galleries and museums internationally. We talk to the painter about his life and practice.

Goldsmithing and textiles have inspired Germany-based Christina Pauls to combine these forms of design. We talk to the artist about her practice.

Without exception, each of David Cass’s artworks describe water in some way. From straight depiction of seas or pools to exploration of environmental extremes.

Jersey City-born watercolourist John DuVal strives to capture the light and colour of urban landscapes to create a fresh, yet familiar feel for the viewer.

Zoran Poposki explores cultural translation, liminality, identity, and public space through a number of different genres and media.

Olga Lomaka plays with recognisable images and products of consumerism, pooling contrasting beliefs to give a second meaning to hidden symbols.

Yusuke Sugiyama uses the concept of boundaries to explore the spaces in between; somewhere between abstraction and embodiment, reality and memory.

Robi Walters’ practice encompasses a re-examination of collage. Utilising bright colours and overlapping textures, each piece finds beauty in everyday materials.

In Lennette Newell’s Ani-human series, the gap between humans and animals is diminished, along with hierarchies imposed by digital technology.

André Lichtenberg’s practice explores contemporary landscape photography, combining childhood memories, sensory visualisation and digital collage.

London-based artist Nina Baxter produces abstract paintings that focus on the interaction of colour, drawing inspiration from landscape and architecture.

Examining the balance between tradition and new trends in contemporary society, Olga Lomaka’s Artefacts combines elements of surrealism and pop art.

Moich Abrahams discusses the dialogues between contemporary practice and the digital age, including spontaneity and the longevity of painting.

Anne Hoerter discusses the development of a practice based upon the intersection between still life painting and technology.

Nikki Stevens specialises in large-scale watercolours which explore our relationship with nature. Animals roam freely amongst symbols of society.

With a deep interest in fashion and costume design, Meiyi Yang explores the relationship between jewellery and clothing as they relate to the human body.

Gabriela Torres Ruiz is a German-Mexican photographer and Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 shortlisted artist. She discusses the notion of place.

Tomas Harker recontextualises images culled from classical paintings and found photographs. Aesthetica talk to the artist about traditional inspiration.

Swiss artist Fabien Bruttin’s work is based on experimental approaches with different paints. We delve into his fascination behind accidental creations.

Carmen Selma is a Spain-based painter. Memory is one of the fundamental pillars of her work. We talk to the artist about the influence of historical contexts.

Moich Abrahams has been selected for numerous exhibitions including ICA, Hayward Gallery and Whitechapel. We talk to him about his practice.

Anna Fafaliou is a London-based conceptual and visual artist fascinated by the relationship between the colour white and memory. We talk to the artist about her practice.

Danny Sepkowski provides exciting images of Hawaii’s ocean and waves. We catch up with him to talk through his processes and inspirations.