Jeffrey Gibson talks to Ben Luke, welcome to A brush with… about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.

Gibson—born in 1972 in Colorado Springs, in the US, and based today in Germantown, New York—has created a visual language which fuses text, high colour and rich pattern, and a diverse materiality to evoke joy and exuberance as well as critique and resistance. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Jeffrey brings together Indigenous languages and histories, queer aesthetics, an abiding concern with broader ancient, historic, Modern and contemporary visual culture, and a profound engagement with popular music and literature. His works range from painting, in which he trained, to myriad sculptural forms, performances and installations and video. With this interdisciplinary practice, he deliberately confronts orthodoxies in the art world and art history, questioning biases regarding taste, value and legitimacy, confronting and subverting stereotypes of Indigenous people and culture, and proposing a radical interaction with the objects and spaces he creates. He reflects on his work’s overarching collage aesthetic, the deliberate confrontation in his work with decorative and craft traditions, and the role of colour in his work generally and in his new works for an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Paris. He discusses the early impact of Henri Matisse, his love of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s textile sculptures, the importance to him of Frank Bowling and David Hammons. He talks about his connection with the poet Layli Long Soldier, whose poem inspired the title for his US pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2024, and recalls a remarkable and formative encounter with the writer and critic Hélène Cixous. He also discusses the experience of encountering the music of Goldie and drum and bass in London in the 1990s and how it is reflected in his work today. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, what is art for?

Jeffrey Gibson: THIS IS DEDICATED TO THE ONE I LOVE, Hauser & Wirth, Paris, 20 October-20 December; The Genesis Facade Commission, Jeffrey Gibson: The Animal That Therefore I Am, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,12 September–May 2026; Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, The Broad, Los Angeles, until 28 September; Jeffrey Gibson: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT, MASS MoCA, North Adams, US, until September 2026; Jeffrey Gibson: boshullichi / inlʋchi / we will continue to change, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, until December 2026; An Indigenous Present, co-curated by Jeffrey Gibson, ICA Boston, 9 October-8 March 2026; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 26 June-27 September 2026, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 7 November 2026-14 February 2027.

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Teresita Fernández talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Fernández, born in 1968 in Miami, Florida, is, in the broadest sense, a landscape artist. But her work across three decades has been a rigorous consideration and poetic probing of the nature of landscape. Fundamentally a sculptor, she not only explores landscapes as visual phenomena, but uses the substances found within them to sculpt with—from graphite to iron ore, gold and pyrite. So they are her subject and her material. Beginning with profound research, Teresita reflects on land in relation to geography and geology, but also as a cultural space, with intimate connection to people and communities. Inevitably, then, this is a study of power, in which the history and violence of colonisation looms large. But the landscape is also a metaphor, for the territories within us. And in her works, whether they are vast sculptural or ceramic reliefs, room-scale installations or reflective canopies covering huge areas of public space, the viewer navigates this productive tension between the objective and subjective. She discusses the early significance of Wilfredo Lam, and his influence on her major public sculpture Fata Morgana (2015). She also reflects on her admiration for artists whose writings are central to their practice, including Eva Hesse and Jack Whitten, and her deep engagement and critical response to Robert Smithson. She talks about her pivotal experiences in Japan and the influence of historic Asian art on her thinking. She talks about her friendship with and admiration for Cecilia Vicuña and the importance of the writings of José Martí and Sylvia Wynter, among others. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Teresita Fernández: Liquid Horizon, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, 27 August-25 October; Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson, Radius Books, published 16 October, $60, £42.99 (hb).

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Jane and Louise Wilson talk to Ben Luke about their influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work. Jane and Louise Wilson, born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, in 1967, have been collaborating as a duo since their student days in the late 1980s. Identical twins, they have used their connection as a means of exploring duality, mirroring, and the notion of selfhood amid complex geopolitical contexts. Primarily working in video installation, photography and sound, they have accessed loaded and atmospheric sites, from abandoned military sites to borderlands, and used diverse cultural phenomena, including specific works of art, literature and cinema, to reflect on the environments we occupy and the ways in which they are constructed physically and in terms of political and social meaning. They discuss the pronounced sense of duality and mirroring in their work, the origins of their official partnership in art, shaped by their upbringing, and the enduring relationship between photography and film in their practice. They recall the early impact of John Martin’s work, and how Cindy Sherman proved a hugely significant inspiration in their student days. They discuss artists as diverse as Victor Pasmore, Rita Donagh, Carrie Mae Weems and Nam June Paik and reflect on the enduring influence of film-makers from Rainer Werner Fassbender to Jean Cocteau and Stanley Kubrick. Plus, they give insight into their life in the studio and answer our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Jane and Louise Wilson: Performance of Entrapment, London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, until 10 January 2026; Dendrophiles, Leadenhall Building, Sculpture in the City, London, until spring 2026.

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Tai Shani talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Shani makes sculpture and installations, paintings, performances and films, underpinned by writing that is experimental in approach and singular in its voice. Shani, who was was born in 1976 in London, where she lives and works today, creates bodies of work that evolve and expand across her diverse media, often over several years. They take particular cultural forms, historical events or theoretical ideas as a cornerstone in creating worlds that are at once fantastical and utopian, yet shot through with contemporary political and social ideas and convictions. Tai’s vision is fecund and colourful, and her aesthetic enters the sphere of the epic, the sublime and the gothic. She reflects with particular profundity on how the modes in which she engages have been historically gendered, and reimagines them for today’s audiences. She reflects on writing as the cornerstone of her work, how her political outlook has shifted through her various projects, reflects on the revolutionary possibilities of art in a time of extreme right wing politics, and her enduring ambitions for her own work: “I still want to split the atom.” She discusses the early impact of seeing Ophelia by John Everett Millais, and how it ​​prompted in her a desire “to be able to move someone through an act of creativity”. She recalls seeing Valie Export at Camden Art Centre and how it “completely blew my mind, and nothing was the same afterwards”. She describes the deeply personal circumstances behind Epilogue, a new work responding to Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés. She reflects on the dramatic impact on her of writers including Christine de Pizan, Amy Hollywood and Octavia Butler, and of filmmakers including David Lynch and Carl Dreyer. Plus, she gives insights into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for?”

Tai Shani: The Spell or The Dream, Somerset House, 8 August-14 September; Tai Shani, Gathering, London, 26 September–8 November. Shani has a work in Dulwich Picture Gallery in London’s new sculpture park which is unveiled as part of an opening weekend on 6-7 September; her sculpture for the High Line in New York will remain on view until March 2026.

What is art for? Contemporary artists on their inspirations, influences and disciplines, by Ben Luke, featuring illustrated, edited versions of 25 artist interviews drawn from the A brush with… podcast series, along with new writings, published by HENI on 2 September (US) and 4 September (UK). Available exclusively from HENI.com now.

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Hew Locke talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Locke was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, UK, to the artists Donald and Leila Locke. The family sailed from the UK to Guyana in 1966 and Hew was based there until 1980. He returned to the UK to study art in 1980 and now lives in London. Over more than three decades, Locke has explored a panoply of imagery about nationhood, culture and power. Since he was a child growing up in postcolonial Guyana, he has had a lifelong interest in the symbols nations choose to reflect themselves, the objects they acquire to enrich their cultures, and the institutions that project these values into the world. In sculpture and installation, photography, drawing and textiles, he has created arresting tableaux whose layers of rich materiality, fusing found and everyday objects with finely drawn and crafted elements, foreground nuance and complexity. He reflects the shifting nature of significance and meaning according to time, place and the collective values and subjectivities of his audience. He discusses his desire for complexity without dispensing with formal rigour and visual impact. He reflects on the different forms of composition necessitated by his approach, and his consistent use of cardboard as a material. He discusses the equal influence of his parents on his work, the tutorial with Paula Rego that led to a complete change in the direction of his work, and the impact of seeing Hans Haacke’s celebrated German pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993. Plus, he gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Hew Locke, Gilt, Compton Verney, 5 July-July 2027; Hew Locke: Passages, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, US, 2 October-11 January 2026; Armada, Newlyn Art Gallery, UK, 1 November; Cargoes, King Edward Memorial Park, opening September.

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Rudolf Stingel talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Stingel was born in 1956 in Merano, South Tyrol, Italy, and lives in New York. He explores myriad ways of making paintings and extending the idea of what painting might be. With both a love of his medium and skepticism about the possibility of creating something new from such a time-honoured discipline, Rudolf explores a range of forms of painting, from abstraction to photorealism. He emerged in the 1980s, a period in which painting was condemned to obsolescence by some prominent critics, but he met this dismissal with a tangible sense of liberation, pushing painting beyond its traditional formats and contexts into the realms of sculpture and installation, while also engaging with historical genres and with key figures and objects in art history. The result is a body of work that is simultaneously weighty in the seriousness with which it questions painting and fleet-footed in the way that it relentlessly shifts, doubles-back and invents. Stingel reflects on his constant irreverence for convention, his attempts to “crank up the volume” in his groups of paintings and installation, the subtle strain of autobiography through his work. He discusses the early influence of Pablo Picasso, the enduring impact of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the energy given to him by close friendships with artists including Urs Fischer and Maurizio Cattelan. He talks about the impact of films by Marguerite Duras and the music of Brian Eno. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including those about the art he would like to live with and the rituals of studio life.

Rudolf Stingel: Vineyard Paintings, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 20 September; Les yeux dans les yeux: portraits from the Pinault Collection, Couvent des Jacobins, Rennes, France, until 14 September

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Lubaina Himid talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Himid was born 1954 in Zanzibar and lives today in Preston, UK. Her paintings, sculptures and installations are an invitation to consider marginalised figures, communities and diasporic cultures, to expand the histories that frame our worldview, and ultimately to effect change. From the 1980s, Lubaina has been both artist and organiser, a prolific collaborator, and a crucial voice in establishing a platform for Black artists and women artists in the UK and beyond. Engaging directly with historic and contemporary injustice and structural racism, while relating personal and intimate experiences and feelings, and reinterpreting and reimagining Western art history, her work is rigorously critical and yet poetic, sensuous, humorous and often joyous. She talks about the early impact of Stanley Spencer and Bridget Riley, the inexhaustible influence of William Hogarth, her curatorial work of the mid-1980s and her admiration for her peer in the Black British Arts movement Claudette Johnson. She also reflects on the influence of writers including Audre Lorde and Essex Hemphill. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Lubaina Himid with Magda Stawarska: Another Chance Encounter, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 12 July-2 November; Connecting Thin Black Lines, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 24 June-7 September. Lubaina Himid, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 9 May-22 November 2026

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Ben Luke talks to Huma Bhabha about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Bhabha was born in 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan, and has been based in the US since 1981—she now lives in Poughkeepsie, New York state. She has achieved a profoundly individual figurative sculptural language, exploring the rich history of her medium while also looking to the future. Informed by ancient monuments, Modernist sculpture and an array of other artforms, Huma employs various sculptural traditions—from modelling with clay, to carving, to found-object assemblage—to create figures that are monumental yet vulnerable, otherworldly yet rooted in the vicissitudes of contemporary geopolitics. Alongside her sculptures, Huma has made similarly powerful work in two-dimensions, particularly in combinations of drawing and collage. She reflects on the early and ongoing impact of Rembrandt on her work, her fascination with Pablo Picasso and Robert Smithson, the influence of the writing of Amy Goodman and Roberto Bolaño and how she has responded to the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean Negulesco. She also gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including: what is art for?

Huma Bhabha—Encounters: Giacometti, Barbican, London, until 10 Aug; Huma Bhabha: Distant Star, 13 June-26 July.

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Salman Toor talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, and lives and works in New York. His paintings capture everyday moments in the lives of fictional young, queer, Brown men. Set within private and public environments, these scenes speak of a wealth of feelings and experiences, ranging from touching domestic intimacy and love, to communal solidarity, to societal precarity and violence. While abundantly concerned with contemporary life and identity, Salman’s paintings are informed by a deep passion for historic art, both in Western and South Asian traditions. The result is a body of work of immense technical sensitivity and beauty, shot through with poignancy and wit. He reflects on the growing complexity of his references to the Western tradition of painting in relation to his subject matter. He discusses how the “mist and gaseousness” of a particular shade of green has helped him create particular moods and atmospheres in his work. He talks about playing with conventions in the depictions of certain types of bodies, and exploring and subverting orientalist and racist tropes. Among many other references, he recalls the early influence of Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) and Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period, the enduring impact of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whose sweetness is like “a cup of tea with five teaspoons”, and suggests that he enjoys painters who embark on “slightly crazy” transformations of academic painting traditions. He expresses his ongoing admiration for Anton Chekhov’s short stories and discusses how Whitney Houston’s music was important to him and his “chosen family” in his early years in New York. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Salman Toor: Wish Maker, Luhring Augustine Chelsea and Tribeca, New York, 1 May-21 June. 

Please note that this episode contains a contextualised homophobic slur in the title of a group of Salman Toor's works.

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Kent Monkman talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Monkman was born in 1965 in St Mary’s, Ontario, and today lives and works between New York City and Toronto. He is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, in Manitoba, Canada, and uses the language of European and North American art to reflect on Indigenous experiences. He addresses colonisation and its legacies, loss and memory, resistance and protest, and the disparities between Native American and settler colonial attitudes to gender and sexuality, among many other subjects.

Monkman is often present in his work through his gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a glamorous, supernatural, shapeshifting time-traveller. At once a witness, a trickster and an agent of change, Miss Chief is a key means for Monkman to subvert colonial perspectives, in challenging both the imagery of Old Master paintings and the construction of histories relating to Indigenous peoples. In the conversation, he describes Miss Chief’s role—“living inside” his paintings—reflects on the reimagining of queer narratives of the American fur trade, and discusses the historical and present reverence for gender-fluid or two-spirit people in Indigenous communities. He reflects on the enduring impact of Eugène Delacroix’s painting and writing, the influence of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith on his political conviction, and the dramatic impact of seeing Antonio Gisbert Pérez’s painting The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga (1988) at the Prado in Madrid. He gives insight into the complex process of making his paintings and other aspects of his studio life. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors, Denver Art Museum, Colorado, US, 20 April-17 August; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 27 September-8 March 2026

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