Feline antics are notoriously chaotic. “The cat is, above all things, a dramatist,” author and Egyptologist Margaret Benson is to have said. Sacred to ancient Egyptians, domestic cats share more than 95% of their genetic makeup with tigers, and they can leap five times their height and turn into veritable spring mechanisms when startled. Also, would the Internet be the same without cat memes? For Léo Forest, these lovable, independent, wily, and territorial creatures provide an endless source of inspiration for dynamic pencil drawings.

The Paris-based artist’s playful works tap into the physical and emotional quirks of cats, from brawling pairs to individuals in the midst of grooming, scratching, or attacking. Flailing limbs and blurred motion evoke Italian Futurist painter Giacomo Balla’s seminal painting, “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash” (1912) in which a Dachsund and its owner’s feet are fuzzily multiplied to imply very quick movement.

Forest is currently working toward a project with Moosey in London, where prints are available. Follow him on Instagram for updates.

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In a converted 18th-century chapel on the grounds of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a strange form creeps through openings in the architecture. One can imagine its clipper- and knife-footed tendrils scurrying across the floor as it spills from an upper aperture and even slithers around part of the building’s exterior. Its otherworldly genesis is at the hands of Nicola Turner, known for her monumental, contorted textile installations that often surge from structures and public spaces.

Turner’s solo exhibition, Time’s Scythe, comprises forms made of recycled wool and horsehair, which she hand-stitches inside of mesh to create the bulging, knotted forms. “This is Turner’s first large-scale installation to use pale wool and creates a different energy to her dark sculptures, moving away from their more melancholic character,” the gallery says.

Time’s Scythe continues through September 27 in Wakefield. If you go, check out LR Vandy’s provocative exhibition, Rise, which also continues into September. See more on Turner’s Instagram, and for more twisting, creature-like forms, might also enjoy the work of Kate MccGwire.

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It’s one thing to marvel at the inner workings of a transistor radio or a timepiece, but for artist Manabu Kosaka, that curiosity reaches a whole new level. Using nothing but paper, the artist makes scale replicas of cameras, watches, gaming consoles, shoes, food, and more with a preternatural attention to detail. Not only does a 35mm film camera include a strap and a back hatch that opens, the lever used to advance the film and other gears are also built into the top, some of which are even moveable.

Around ten years ago, Kosaka faced uncertainty about the direction of his work. “During that time, I spoke with a friend who works in art direction, and they suggested that I try creating with simpler materials in a more minimal way,” he tells Colossal. “That advice stayed with me, and gradually I began focusing on paper as my primary material, eventually deciding to work exclusively with it.”

Through a meticulous process of cutting, folding, and scoring, Kosaka creates incredibly realistic depictions of everyday objects, often with a retro twist. He carefully studies the mechanics of the real objects, disassembling them in order to replicate individual components inside. He is currently working on a model of a Playstation 2 console, which was originally released in 2000.

“What I love most about paper is its incredible flexibility,” Kosaka says. “It responds to my ideas almost completely—beyond what I expect, even. It allows me to express what I want in a very direct way, while also feeling that it can become almost anything.”

See much more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Until just the past few decades, textiles were generally created with only practical applications in mind. Although fiber and cloth in its myriad forms had been produced for millennia around the globe, fabrics were woven for either domestic or industrial use, and crafts such as knitting, weaving, basket- and net-making, and more were considered purely functional. Think clothing or decor. Even ornate medieval tapestries were conceived as utilitarian objects, used in stone buildings like churches and large homes to soften sounds and insulate against the cold.

Within the canon of Western art history, in particular, the hierarchy of fine art has long been quite definite: painting and sculpture were chief among mediums. Anything else fell under categories of preparatory processes, craft, or ornament. But in the mid-20th century, that delineation began to shift. Anni Albers, who taught at the Bauhaus and later Black Mountain College, was one of the first artists to approach weaving as both a craft and an art. She laid the foundations for later artists like Sheila Hicks, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Cecelia Vicuña, Faith Ringgold, and many more. Today, artists like Bisa Butler, Do Ho Suh, Nick Cave, and countless others continue to challenge boundaries and redefine the role of textiles in art.

A new exhibition at Saatchi Gallery takes a fresh look at how fiber has become a celebrated facet of contemporary art. Textile Art Redefined is curated by Helen Adams, founder of the platform Textile Curator. Vibrant colors and patterns infuse the show with a sense of joy and optimism, while the selection highlights the broad range of approaches to different materials, such as Ian Berry’s large-scale installation titled “Secret Garden,” which mimics Delft tiles and yet is made entirely of recycled denim. And Kenny Nguyen’s large-scale wall piece, made of thousands of colorful strips of silk, appears to undulate and swirl.

For some of these artists, like Argentinian duo Chiachio & Giannone and knit designer Kaffe Fassett—who continues to work alongside his long-term partner, designer Brandon Mably—the union of art and craft lends itself to a entire lifestyle built around fiber as a form of expression, brimming with color and patterns. Colossal readers may also recognize work by Anne von Freyburg, Signe Emdal, Deniz Kurdak, and Benjamin Shine, in addition to Caroline Burgess, Sara Impey, Simone Pheulpin, Jakkai Siributr, Magda Sayeg, and Jenni Dutton. “In an increasingly digital world, creating by hand has taken on a new appreciation,” says a statement.

Textile Art Redefined continues through May 10 in London. Adams is also the author of the new book Textile Fine Art, published by Laurence King.

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Artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who work as NEVERCREW, have a knack for bringing the immensity of nature to developed urban spaces. Their colorful, large-scale murals take a playful tack when it comes to portraying animals, often merging them with other objects such as instant photos or, most recently, a plastic punch-out toy. “Souvenir,” completed this year in Vienna, combines motifs of a large bear with other Arctic components, such as icebergs, a seabird, and a steamship.

“The natural environment appears transformed, filtered, made artificial: it is no longer a space experienced through relationship, but a distant construction,” the artists say in a statement. The work is “almost a simulation reflecting a perception of nature progressively emptied of empathy…Nature becomes something to observe, arrange, organize, as if it were a separate object rather than a system of which we are an integral part.”

Over the past few years, NEVERCREW has completed numerous architectonic paintings that depict the fragile balance between humanity and nature—specifically wildlife. Whales, bears, and elephants are depicted inside of terrariums or bundled into fabrics.

The animals’ very presence on the side of buildings, where they are contained within the bounds of the architecture, is a reminder of the tensions between—one might even say the incongruousness of—daily human activities and city infrastructure. For Rebbechi and Togni, bringing nature into these spaces highlights the importance of sustaining the relationship between humankind and nature.

See more on the artists’ Instagram.

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Where the blue sky breaks through the tree canopy or light reflects onto the surface of a pond, illustrator Masha Foya summons moments of joy and surprise. The Kyiv-based artist’s dreamlike illustrations often portray spaces and individuals in emotional or experiential states, as if the entire environment morphs into a single living being. Hands clasp over the arc of a foliage tunnel, for example, and a plane sails through an aperture shaped like a bird in flight. Seemingly enclosed spaces often converge with the sky or the cosmos, alluding to the boundlessness of imagination and feeling.

The work shown here comprises both personal and commissioned projects. Foya is currently working on developing a number of book covers for Ukrainian publishing houses, and she is also collaborating with Scientific American and the German newspaper DIE ZEIT. Her work is also included in two exhibitions, Illustroteka and Everything Is Translation, organized by Pictoric. See more on Foya’s Behance and Instagram.

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For millennia, humans have navigated seas, rivers, and oceans as avenues for trade, exploration, conquest, and colonization. During the Age of Discovery—an era interwoven with what’s known as the Age of Sail—European explorers and traders embarked on journeys around the world to map previously uncharted continents, trade commodities, and establish new socio-political outposts. Imperial forces competed with one another to control as much as they could, all in the name of wealth and power, and individual landowners and traders profited immensely. But sustaining a presence in far-flung places would never have been remotely possible, nevertheless successful, without slavery.

Well into the 19th century, humans were transported through a vast slave network, with millions crammed aboard ships bound for various parts of Europe or North America. For London-based artist LR Vandy, the layered and often fraught legacies of labor, shipping, and trade undergird a distinctive sculptural practice.

Vandy’s studio is based at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent, where the history of wooden ships is alive and well. She uses materials such as Manila rope—a thick nautical rope made from the abaca plant, which is native to The Philippines—bobbers, navigation equipment, ship’s helms, hull-shaped wooden forms, and more, to explore the tangles of maritime history.

Vandy’s exhibition titled Rise, in The Weston Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, marks the artist’s first solo museum show. Many of the works seen here are included in the show, while others represent earlier pieces. In her most recent work, the rope is a central focus as she explores its “entanglement in human
history, its role in the development of civilisations, and its inextricable links to colonial enslavement of people,” says an exhibition statement. Everyday objects are repurposed and manipulated in an ongoing inquiry into process and materials, especially “drawing attention to the social, economic and political systems embedded within everyday objects.”

Anchoring the space at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a giant, rope-covered form evocative of a maypole, nodding to historic European folk traditions that celebrate community, ritual, and regeneration. Other objects appear to spin or sway, as if skirts are swishing or invisible players move through a series of games. “My practice centres the hidden human costs of colonialism, transportation systems and commodities, and the knotted histories of trade and power they contain,” Vandy says in a statement. “The title, Rise, references ideas of resilience, protest, liberation, and collective joy explored through rituals and dance.”

Rise continues through September 13 in Wakefield. If you go, also see Nicola Turner’s dramatic exhibition, Time’s Scythe. Learn more and plan your visit on the park’s website, and follow Vandy on Instagram for updates.

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In the mid-20th century, before preservation efforts revived Miami’s Art Deco South Beach neighborhood with bright colors and lavish hotels, the area was a whitewashed holiday haven for retirees. And in a third-floor room of the Colony Hotel, which looked out onto the building’s marquee and the street below, a unique artistic endeavor unfolded.

Ukrainian artist Jonko “George” Voronovsky (1903-1982) transformed his humble, long-term residence into a vibrant environment of paintings and objects that he described as “memoryscapes.” Having endured incredible hardship amid the political maneuvers of the U.S.S.R. and the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s, he chose to work in a bright, optimistic style that summoned idyllic remembrances from his youth. A short film by Dia Kontaxis, “George V.,” spotlights his legacy.

By all accounts, Voronovsky experienced a loving, typically middle class upbringing in Ukraine in the early 20th century. He spent his youth exploring his village and local forests, studying music, and dabbling in visual art. By the time he was a teenager, the Russian Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of a protracted period of upheaval in Ukraine. His father died during this time, and the country entered the control of the Soviet Union.

By the early 1930s, Voronovsky had moved to Kyiv. He married in 1933 and became a father to two children. He worked as a mapmaker, and he witnessed the systematic destruction of Kyiv’s historically baroque architecture, which the Soviets replaced with the propagandistic Stalinist style.

In 1941, life would again change drastically. Hitler invaded Ukraine and took control of Kyiv. Three years later, Voronovsky and his family were forced—like many thousands of Ukrainians—to resettle in a camp. They were marched hundreds of miles to Prague, where he then was separated from his family when he was furthered on to a labor camp in Germany. Although he later sent them a portion of his wages to support them, he never saw his wife or children again.

Throughout the 1940s, Voronovsky drifted, traveling with a group called the Musical Wanderers that played in Displaced Persons camps around Ukraine. In 1951, as part of a program that eased immigration quotas in the U.S. to welcome European refugees, Voronovsky landed in New York, then moved to Philadelphia, where the Ukrainian immigrant community was well established. For a while, he found work with the railroad, continued to play music, and traveled. During the 1960s, he created some of his earliest work, a series of nude sculptures.

Eventually, due to his health and a desire to retire somewhere warm, Voronovsky took a room at the Colony Hotel in Miami Beach. Piece by piece, he filled his modest space with colorful paintings and sculptures made from wood, styrofoam, aluminum, and other found materials. These elaborate, often joyful compositions drew from his memories of Ukraine. They highlighted animals, dances, architecture, and bucolic, sunny landscapes. Completely concealed from public display, it was only a matter of chance that his work was seen from the street by a young artist named Gary Monroe, who knocked on the door and befriended the artist.

The amount of work Voronovsky fit into his space was staggering. “This little room was probably nine by 12 feet—5,000 objects,” Monroe says. Star-like forms made from drink cans covered his cabinets and were arranged around paintings. He’d use the backs of pizza boxes and magazine spreads to make his work, drawing from the post-consumer landscape of Miami Beach.

It’s thanks to Monroe that Voronovsky’s work was introduced to a wider audience, first shown in 1986 at a Miami bookstore called Books & Books. It wasn’t until 2023 that the High Museum of Art in Atlanta organized the first major solo exhibition of the obscure artist’s work, recognizing his contribution to the canon of self-taught art in the U.S.

Kontaxis’ film spotlights the High Museum’s exhibition along with interviews and archival footage. See more of her work on Vimeo.

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Amid groves of trees, meadows, and aging infrastructure, Cinga Samson’s dreamlike tableaux are bathed in eerie light, as if spotlit or illuminated by the moon. The South African artist is known for his use of deep, dark pigments such as carbon black and Prussian blue, complemented by the occasional teal or purple and pops of bright white in t-shirts or sneakers. His figures, engaged in enigmatic activities, look on with spectral, all-white eyes. Green and brown foliage camouflages individuals who gather in fields, sort through mysterious items, and appear to converge with other beings like large birds.

The work seen here is currently on view in the artist’s solo exhibition at White Cube called Ukuphuthelwa. In the artist’s native language, isiXhosa, the title means “unable to sleep.” “Unlike the English word ‘insomnia,’ the isiXhosa term carries no negative connotation, and accordingly, for Samson, sleeplessness is not a condition to be cured but a state of spiritual alertness, a sensitivity that deepens in the dark,” the gallery says.

The nature of consciousness and even the realm of dreams is an apt entry point to Samson’s latest work, which examines how painting can be what he describes as “true and honest.” What is real? What do we imagine? Throughout art history, animals have long symbolized certain qualities or beliefs, such as dogs as allegories of fidelity and birds as messengers between the earthly and the divine. In the artist’s large-scale compositions, there is a sense of “readability” akin to the narrative-driven Western art genre of history paintings, where the presence of these beings hints at meaning. Yet as we spend time with Samson’s works, curiosity and wonder seem to always overtake glimpses of recognition.

Even though the artist’s scenes may seem at first indecipherable, there is a foundational sense of reverence and ceremony in how his figures commune in seemingly out-of-the-way places for undisclosed, perhaps ritualistic purposes. Samson invites us to encounter the unknown, weaving a tension between what is knowable and what is unspecified or concealed. Through this, he explores the limits of representation in art and aims for what the gallery describes as “the authority of the unnameable and the territory of the sublime,” where sacredness is present in holy spaces and everyday experiences alike.

Ukuphuthelwa continues through April 18 in New York City. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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In the little town of Kosciusko, Mississippi, a self-described “unusual artist” named L.V. Hull transformed her home and garden of three-and-a-half decades into an elaborate, continuous artwork. Through found objects and trinkets, paint, and glue she purchased at the local Walmart, the artist created an immersive art environment—a riot of color, patterns, and textures in which creativity merged with daily living.

Many of Hull’s works are currently on view in the show Love Is a Sensation at the Mississippi Museum of Art, which celebrates the self-taught artist’s eclectic approach to materials and space. From vibrantly painted everyday objects to idiosyncratic assemblages, Hull’s creativity and penchant for collecting knew no bounds.

“Hull merged art-making and the Southern art of ‘visiting’ to craft a creative practice that allowed her to commune with her inner spirit, her Creator, her community, and visitors from around the state, region, and world,” says a statement.

As a Black woman from a small Southern community, working within a genre often referred to as folk art, the artist worked outside of the mainstream art world. And like many minorities—especially in rural places—her practice is among those that have been marginalized within the canon, “resulting in an incomplete account of American creativity and art history,” the museum says. Love Is a Sensation spotlights Hull’s contributions to not only the creative legacy of the South but the tradition of artist-built environments.

Love Is a Sensation continues through June 14 in Jackson, and it also marks the advent of the new L.V. Hull Legacy Center, which is slated to open to the public this summer. You might also enjoy Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project in Detroit, plus Jo Farb Hernández’s forthcoming book, Architectural Fantasies, which is slated for release on April 14.

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In works that merge sculpture, fashion, and kite-making, Hai-Wen Lin traverses the thresholds that connect one’s physical self, the mind, and the elements. The artist describes their practice as “an act of reorienting: looking back, looking forward, looking in, looking up.”

Using a wide range of materials, Lin creates vibrant, abstract compositions in textile often manipulated with cyanotype patterns or dyed with natural hues such as indigo and turmeric. They make kites “that speak the language of clothing,” blurring definitions of craft, art, garments, and acts of play.

Lin has long been interested in chance operations, documentation of daily life, and ways of releasing control. They artist first learned to sew as a way to explore and navigate questions of gender. During graduate school, they landed on the concept of a kite as a way of loosening up in terms of research and getting out into the open—literally embracing the wind. They were thus inspired by a stirring question: “What does it mean to care for, drape, dress, and accommodate change and instability?”

Lin’s pieces employ an array of materials and processes, such as discarded paintings, a variety of fabrics, jewelry findings, and more. “Two Can Share Heaven,” for example, incorporates dyed cotton, faux fur, polyester, velvet, and silk—the latter of which harkens to historical fashion.

The artist also occasionally includes experiential, ephemeral additions in the works’ materials lists, such as “a burning sensation, a desire to be lost” in a piece titled “Sunday, April 2nd 5:13–7:31pm,” among others, and titles sometimes reflect the dates and times when the kites were worn as garments.

Lin is fascinated by the tradition of Japanese paper sode dako, or “kimono kites,” which resemble the silhouette of the timeless robes. “It’s very simple, but the idea of the body in flight, is of course a powerful image,” Lin says, adding:

When I was young, my dad would have us write wishes on pieces of paper and send them up the kite lines when we flew them. If they disappeared when you reeled the kite back in, it meant the wish had been granted. So the kites have always been about a sense of wish-making. I think clothing offers a similar sense of aspiration for a lot of people.

Lin’s kites can just as easily be described as textile sculptures or apparel. They drape beautifully in exhibition spaces like abstract tapestries, severed from their free-flying, outdoor associations. They wrap around the human form like elegant, ethereal, shapeshifting mantles.

“What continues to interest me in this dialogue is the ways in which clothing and weather have always been in conversation,” Lin says, continuing:

Clothing is an interface that delineates our bodies from the environment, so I’m interested in reversing and reorienting that relationship. What would it mean to clothe the weather instead? I often refer to my works as clothing for the wind. I think of dress and clothing as a form of care. I love that we forecast weather and that we forecast fashion. It’s all a kind of attempt at discerning some kind of future. How do we care for a future sky with the clothes we make and wear now?

Loosely modeled after Chinese dragon robes, which were popularized among emperors and dynastic officials during the Tang Dynasty, “Two Can Share Heaven” explores notions of togetherness and cooperation. Unlike traditional garments, the artist designed the piece to be worn by two people as “a simple but direct challenge to the notion of a single ruler blessed by gods,” they share. “Here, power must be shared, redistributed, and negotiated between two.”

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has awarded Lin the 2025 Burke Prize, a prestigious grant given to an artist under the age of 45 working in the U.S. whose practice revolves around contemporary craft. If you’re in New York, see Lin’s work at MAD from February 28 to October 11. The artist is also currently working toward a solo exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Follow updates on Instagram.

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When we think of terms like “flowing” or “fluid,” we could be referring to the nature of water, but we can also just as easily apply these concepts to our understanding of art and craft. Fabrics “pool” and different mediums converge. The nature of creativity is often referred to in terms of an “ebb and flow.” Ecologically speaking, bodies of water are metaphorically woven into the fabric of our planet. Rivers and lakes sustain an abundance of life, shape cultures, and course through history. Amid the ongoing climate crisis, how do artists express concerns about water and the environment?

Water | Craft, a group exhibition at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, dives into this question. The museum itself is situated on the banks of the Mississippi River and often directly engages with its expansive biological and cultural reach. Works by seven artists, whose practices incorporate weaving, pottery, basketry, glass, and textile arts, directly interface with contemporary issues of water access and cultural preservation amid climate change.

Colossal readers may be familiar with the mixed-media pieces of Tali Weinberg and Nicole McLaughlin, both of whom combine quantities of colorful thread with other materials in meditations on interconnectivity and multi-disciplinarity. Weinberg translates ecological data into tendril-like installations and abstract weavings, such as a series of three pieces from her Climate Datascapes series that visualize information about silt in the Upper Mississippi River. McLaughlin’s dramatically fringed ceramic platters reference Pre-Columbian cultures and the continuum of human history and time.

Water | Craft also includes works by Rowland Ricketts, Sarah Sense, Therman Statom, Kelly Church, and Tanya Aguiñiga. The latter is known for her intricately knotted wall works containing terracotta forms, which cascade gently to the floor. And Ricketts’ large-scale installation, “Bow,” comprises strands of indigo-dyed linen that suspend within a large gallery space, creating the effect of a current or perhaps the silhouette of a boat.

“Just as water flows through bodies, landscapes, and cultural histories, craft knowledge is passed between generations, carrying technical skills alongside cultural values,” the museum says. “The artists in Water | Craft employ traditional methods not as nostalgic gestures, but as living practices that continue to evolve in response to environmental change.”

Water | Craft continues through December 27 in Winona.

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