The publication of the third issue of HIGH The Journal curated by Artribune follows up on an editorial project that has been exploring the relationships between fashion, art and contemporary visual culture since its launch..
The distribution of the magazine at major international fairs shows a willingness to take root in the key environments for artistic trends. These events serve as forums for dialogue and discussion, in which HIGH The Journal curated by Artribune Artribune fits in as a critical observatory of contemporary aesthetic practices.
This issue focuses in particular on a selection of European exhibitions that provide a view into the current artistic quests. Alongside this, the Fall/Winter 20252026 collection of the HIGH brand highlights a sartorial approach that combines technique and form, engaging in a direct dialogue with post-modern artistic currents.
Angelo Guttadauro’s photography project, inspired by Hans-Peter Feldmann’s work Alle Kleider einer Frau, explores female identity through clothing. Each Polaroid picture represents a fragment of visual memory, in which fashion and self-representation overlap, creating an intimate and layered narrative.
The interview with artist Nilufer Yildirim offers a glimpse into her creative process, suspended between abstraction and figuration. Her layered, materic painting explores the relationship between inner experience and environment, establishing an ideal connection with the sartorial identity of HIGH.
Finally, the HIGH Prize, launched by the brand, aims to support and promote emerging talents in the fields of fashion and art. This award underscores the brand’s commitment to fostering creativity and innovation, in line with the editorial vision of HIGH The Journal curated by Artribune
Alessia Caliendo
Between abstraction and figuration: painting as a space of tension
INTERVIEW WITH NILUFER YILDIRIM
Nilufer Yildirim talks about her journey across Istanbul, New York and Italy, exploring painting as a space of tension between languages and perceptions. Through a material and layered approach, her work reflects on the relationship between inner experience and surroundings. In the interview, the artist discusses the role of memory, the city, and experimentation, while also explaining his affinity with the HIGH The Journal editorial project and the sartorial identity of HIGH
Your work shifts between the abstract and the figurative. What are you interested in exploring in this border zone? My interest focuses on the liminal zone between abstraction and figura -
tion, a space in which a fruitful tension activates, one that can generate unconventional expressive possibilities. Abstract shapes, despite lacking any recognizable references, can trigger memories or evoke deep emotions. Similarly, figuration, when deconstructed or distorted, allows us to explore subtler levels of identity and perception. This in-between space does not attempt immediate visual confirmations, but invites the viewers to question themselves, to complete the image through their own subjective experience. It’s a field of intentional ambiguity, where visual language goes to the edges of what is sayable, opening up intimate and fragmented narratives.
Nilufer
Textures, pigments, recycled materials – your method has an almost sculptural feel. How do you structure the surface in your paintings?
The process is dynamic and layered, based on ongoing experimentation. Each work comes from a progressive overlay of materials – oil, acrylic, pure pigments, inks – that interact with each other generating textural contrasts. The surface builds over time, receiving interventions, erasures, reworks. I often work by subtraction, scraping or carving through the paint layer to bring out
earlier traces, as if each canvas held a sedimented memory. This approach, which we might call almost archaeological, makes the painting into a living presence, in which the material is never neutral, but carries tensions, gestures and invisible presences.
What role does the – physical and emotional – environment play in your creative process?
I don’t make a distinction between outer space and inner landscape: both have a crucial influence on the creation
of a work. The light, the temperature, the surfaces I come in contact with all affect the gestures, the color range, the rhythm of the intervention. At the same time, what happens inside me –thoughts, emotional states, latent memories – shapes the direction of the work. Each painting becomes the result of an interaction between what happens around and what emerges from within, without any hierarchy. I do not try to portray environments, but to convey their affective impression. Painting thus becomes an act of presence,
a recording of the complexity of the lived moment, made up of dissonances, layers and unperceivable transitions.
You have lived in Istanbul, New York and now Milan. How does all this reflect in your visual language? Each city left a specific mark on my approach to art. Istanbul passed on the power of dualism to me: a city made of cultural stratifications and strong contrasts between tradition and modernity, between East and West. New York taught me the value of risk, of urgency, of radical freedom in creating art. Milan, instead, for me represents a place of sedimentation: its more thoughtful dimension, its attention to details, and its historical legacy push me toward a more conscious research. My visual language has evolved as a changing synthesis of these experiences, turning each inhabited context into a separate but interconnected visual vocabulary.
Opening a studio in Milan marks a new chapter. What prompted you to settle here?
The connection with Milan started a long time ago. I first studied here 20 years ago, and it has ever since remained a reference city, where I have often been coming back to. Settling down now with a studio was a natural transition, driven by the need for a place where I could work freely but also immersed in a living network of confrontation. Milan, with its gentle energy, offers a fruitful space for developing and sharing work. Its cultural context, combined with a heterogeneous community of artists and thinkers, nourishes my creative process. This new chapter comes as a logical prosecution of my path, in which the local dimension constantly engages in dialogue with the international one.
You chose to support the editorial project HIGH’s in-house organ, the HIGH The Journal curated by Artribune. How do you find an affinity with your artistic vision?
I am interested in the way HIGH deals with issues such as complexity, crossdisciplinary research, and experimentation. The Journal does not propose any simplistic reads, but opens up for layered reflec- tions, just as it happens in my own work. The idea of creating an editorial container that can host different per- spectives, fostering dialogue between fields such as art, fashion and
visual thinking, is perfectly in line with my vision. Supporting HIGH means being part of a collective conversation, where each contribution enriches the cultural landscape without necessarily oversimplifying it.
Could you share your idea of the HIGH brand and of the attention given to sartorial choices and materials that make it a benchmark?
What impresses me about HIGH is the consistency between design vision and quality of execution. There is a strong focus on material, formal construction, and attention to details. Away from the logic of fashions, the brand embodies an idea of elegance that stems from the respect for the process and for the Ital-
ian manufacturing tradition. As an artist, I can identify with this approach: working by layers, thinking by relationships, and giving value to time and transformation. HIGH does not produce ephemeral objects, instead it creates visual languages that last, capable of narrating an identity without ostentation.
Alessia Caliendo
Production Alessia Caliendo
Photographer Errico Fabio Russo
Muah Lucrezia Florindi
Production assistant Francesca Zeverino
Must-see exhibitions in Europe
IN SUMMER AND FALL 2025
From Australian Aboriginal art to Japanese sound installations, as well as Yoko Ono’s conceptual pacifism and the creative irreverence of the Saint Phalle-Tinguely duo, our selection of exhibitions offer a diverse and powerful insight into the contemporary scene. Here’s what to see in London, Berlin, Milan and Paris.
germany
YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER
Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 11 April – 14 September 2025
Yoko Ono’s artwork manifests as a call for active, collective participation. The exhibition features historical installations cheering for peace: visitors enter with Cleaning Piece, fold paper cranes, reassemble cups in Mend Piece. The exhibition centerpiece is Play It By Trust, a white chessboard for a game which is impossible to memorize. The itinerary also touches on SKY / WATER, Bed-In for Peace and the WAR IS OVER! ads, drawing a direct line to Berlin of 1969. Outside, a single Wish Tree links the project to the parallel exhibition at Gropius Bau. The entire curatorial setup centers around the shared utopia of a peace to be imagined, together.
EMILY KAM KNGWARRAY
Tate Modern, London
10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026
First European monographic exhibition dedicated to Emily Kam Kngwarray, Australian Aboriginal artist active since the 1970s. Native to Alhalker Country, she has transposed the ceremonial codes of the Anmatyerr tradition into batik fabrics and large acrylic canvases, often while seated on the ground. More than 70 works are on display: from early cotton batiks from 1977, to paintings depicting seeds, roots and totemic animals such as emus. Heart of the exhibition is the monumental installation The Alhalker suite (1993)-22 canvases that deliver an expanded portrait of his homeland. The exhibit concludes with a series of works from the 1990s, between gestural abstraction and vivid monochromes, marking an indissoluble link between body, land and painting.
NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, JEAN TINGUELY, PONTUS HULTEN
Centre Pompidou, Paris 20 June 2025 – 4 January 2026
An exhibition that explores the interplay between two leading figures of the European avant-garde and their longtime supporter. Saint Phalle and Tinguely, who were bound together in life and art, shared a radical and inclusive vision of creation with Pontus Hulten. The exhibition features iconic works and documents that cover the friendship and collaborations between the three: from Nana géante on exhibit at Moderna Museet in 1966, to the Crocrodrome experience at Centre Pompidou in 1977. A retrospective mapping that highlights the partnership between artistic activity and establishment, under the banner of freedom of expression and open participation.
YUKO MOHRI
Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan | 8 September 2025 – 11 January 2026
Yuko Mohri brings her work made of sound, movement and invisible phenomena to Italy for the first time. Using kinetic installations made from found objects and environment sensors, the Japanese artist orchestrates ecosystems that react to agents such as humidity, dust, or temperature. The work – music instruments, electrical mechanisms, self-activating circuits - transform the exhibition space into an organic habitat where natural and artificial contaminate each other. The exhibition covers the artist’s entire career, with historical pieces as well as recent projects, and proposes a continuous interaction between work, environment and viewer.
Portrait of Yoko Ono in London, 1969, Photo Iain Macmillan, copyright Yoko Ono
All the clothes, one woman
Angelo Guttadauro signs a photographic project for the HIGH brand inspired by the work Alle Kleider einer Frau (1974) by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann. As in the original, the medium here is the Polaroid picture: an immediate, fragile, intimate format. The HIGH collection serves as narrative material for a series of portraits that examine female identity through clothing. Each shot is a fragment, each body is an opportunity. The project creates a layered visual memory, where fashion and self-representation are blurred.
Curated by Alessia Caliendo
Forma Viva
The fashion shoot of HIGH The Journal curated by Artribune is taking shape in the heart of Milan, amidst experimentation and memory. The protagonist is moving through the premises of the Fondazione Officine Saffi, a non-profit institution founded to explore the language of contemporary ceramics. The location, a laboratory of ideas and a crossroads of disciplines, reveals a dynamic and inclusive vision of art as a cultural and social practice. In this context, fashion intertwines with matter, in a dialogue that reinterprets tradition through innovation.
Curated by Alessia Caliendo
emozióne
[sostantivo femminile] Forte impressione, turbamento, eccitazione.
Lasciati ispirare dalla Collezione Peggy Guggenheim. Scopri l’energia e la bellezza delle avanguardie con Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Emilio Vedova, Jackson Pollock e molti altri che hanno fatto la storia dell’arte del ‘900.
guggenheim-venice.it
Vasily Kandinsky, Paesaggio con macchie rosse, n. 2 (Landschaft mit roten Flecken, Nr. 2), 1913. Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Venezia.
FW25/26 Collection: A dialogue between fashion and art
The HIGH Fall/Winter 2025-2026 collection has been developed as a project that connects fashion, art, and workmanship. The conceptual framework is based on a dialogue with some of the main postmodern artistic movements, interpreted through a tailoring concept that alternates design strictness and freedom of composition.
The connection to postmodernism emerges in the design of garments that give up symmetry in favor of oblique cuts, unconventional proportions and unexpected combinations. The sculptural forms and asymmetries become narrative tools that translate the principles of certain artistic movements such as Minimalism, Anti-Form, and Process Art into the language of clothing. In this context, designing the garment is not only functional to the aesthetical result, but an essential part of the expressive content.
Each stage of the manufacturing process – from model-making to craft processing – is emphasized as a significant moment, equal to the final production package. The approach is artisanal and materializes in interventions on textiles and finishes: shaded effects made with an airbrush, over-dyes on denim, material textures that restore three-dimensionality to garments.
The result is a collection based on a concept of clothing as a form of expression, without compromising on functionality. The garments are part of a wardrobe designed for dynamic everyday life, with the ability to adapt to different contexts while maintaining stylistic and technical consistency. The color palette ranges between warm and natural tones. Browns alternate with military green, khaki, stone gray and umber. Printed patterns recall abstract and naturalistic motifs, and especially floral and animal themes revisited in a graphic key.
A key role is assigned to knitwear, which explores cuts, rawcut finishes, unstructured fits, and contrasting textures. The HIGH Tech product line employs high-performance materials with treatments that evoke conceptual art codes, with garments that combine rationality and wearability. The collection is structured as an open, non-sequential system in which the single elements can be combined in different ways. What emerges is a feminine identity that gets defined over time, with no constraints of season, or formal code. Aesthetics becomes a means towards a reflection on clothing as a language tool, and not only as a finished product.
HIGH PRIZE WINNER 2025
Sarah Isabelle Tan
Sarah Isabelle Tan is an artist and researcher living between London and Singapore. Her practice adopts a postmedia approach, grounded in a sensitivity to the behavior of materials and the processes of creation. Through drawing, painting and printmaking, she investigates image-making as an openended process shaped by gesture, surface and temporality.
She has been awarded the HIGH Prize for Creative Excellence 2025 for the innovative, cross-disciplinary nature of her work, which explores the interaction between the body and the temporal dimension.
INTERVIEW WITH
SARAH ISABELLE TAN
How has your artistic journey developed up to the Royal College of Art (RCA)?
Being at RCA represents the fulfillment of a dream that began with a degree in Photography from the London College of Communication. For me, art is a space devoted to what does not yet
have a name or may never have one. Writing follows my artistic practice, not as mere description, but as an essential part of the creative process. I was seeking an environment where I could bring art practice and writing together, and the MRes program proved to be perfect for this combination.
What is your cultural heritage and how does it influence your research?
Living between Singapore and London has profoundly shaped my worldview, which is marked by a constant interplay between closeness and nostalgia. This “living between” has driven me to preserve the connection with what is absent through gestures that bridge distances. Family practices of mourning and remembrance have further defined my ethics of care and restraint, a “staying-with” what eludes physical presence.
What materials and processes define your practice and how does the RCA support you?
I do not really have a set bond with specific materials, but I do feel a special interest in their behavior and responsiveness. Currently, I am working with thin membranes of translucent acrylic polymer, in which pigments spread slowly, creating unpredictable results. Earlier, I had been exploring silver gelatin for its sensitivity to light. It is crucial to give care and attention during the creative process. At the RCA, I use the MRes studio space as a place for reflection and silent dialogue with the artwork.
What future aspirations do you have after RCA?
I would like to develop my practice both as an artist and in the academic field, while also keeping a living dialogue between creation, writing, and teaching. I aim to develop a pedagogical approach based on care and critical effort and, if possible, to pursue a PhD. My goal is to create sensitive and reflective works that gently incorporate the conditions that generated them.
A sartorial project between technique and form
For the 2025-2026 Fall/Winter season, HIGH has created a collection that shifts between craftsmanship, attention to materials, and redefinition of formal structures. The project follows a layered approach, where handcrafting and technical experimentation combine to define a new stylistic code. At the heart of the whole project is the concept of tailoring as a mindful practice. Each garment is designed as a sum of steps: choosing materials, developing volumes, and treating surfaces. The processing is not only decorative, but serves to generate new tactile and visual sensations.
The selection of textiles alternates between flowing, lightweight fibers – such as satin and georgette – and more technical materials, including nylon, warp-knit jersey, and compact fabrics. Forms adopt a deconstructed grammar: dropped shoulders, uncentered stitching, large and mobile volumes. Asymmetries are used to shift the compositional axis of garments, while functional details, such as zippers, metal rings or diagonal cuts, provide room for transformability.
Highlights include the double-breasted leather biker jacket with belt and studs, which represents a reinterpretation of urban codes; the asymmetrical mock turtle-neck with double collar and raw-cut edges introduces formal solutions that resemble draping into knitwear; the wool jacket with D-rings allows for an adjustable fit, combining both aesthetic and function. The egg-shape dress in Sensitive synthesizes research on proportion and composition: voluminous draperies contrast with a dry corset to create a balance between structure and movement.
Artisanal processing defines the visual identity of the collection. Airbrushed techniques, overdyes, contrasting pigmentations, abstract printed patterns, and plastic-effect finishes introduce a materic layer that complements the sartorial design. The sensory dimension becomes an essential part of the wearable experience of the garment.
The collection does not present a linear theme narrative, but proposes combinable modules that are designed to generate different meanings depending on how they are worn. The wardrobe emerges as a flexible system, which is consistent in its design vision but open to individual interpretation.
Elegance with a sporty feel:
CAPSULE SPORT SMART FW 25-26
Contemporary flair, versatility and comfort: the Sport Smart FW25-26 capsule collection by HIGH renews the everyday wardrobe by blending activewear and innovative materials with craftsmanship. The collection, completely Made in Italy, stands out for its geometric cuts, soft volumes and functional details.
Emblematic pieces include the Q-NOVA® scuba jersey suit, featuring a boxy jacket with tone-on-tone mesh details and braided pants that create a three-dimensional effect. Readyto-wear essentials are the ultralight padded vest and the tailored suit in gauze stretch jersey with high thermal performance.
The iconic Sensitive® jersey characterizes garments with structured folds, jogger pants, feminine-fit shirts and sporty skirts with large side pockets. The strict black and white palette is revitalized by an original flower print applied to a long dress and a T-shirt with stylish mesh details. With the Sport Smart line, HIGH presents an environmentally conscious and contemporary sporty elegance.
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