Where Beauty and Sorrow Are Inseparable
A reflection on fragility, grief and transformation through a mixed-media study of a single flower suspended in darkness.
A reflection on fragility, grief and transformation through a mixed-media study of a single flower suspended in darkness.
Josh Stein’s The Giving Project: After Hours follows the relationships that emerged from giving artworks to strangers. Through photographs taken in late-night and off-hours spaces, the project documents where these encounters have led—across lower Manhattan, Monmouth County, and the Napa Valley—turning ephemeral exchange into personal record.
Enrique Hernandez reflects on how to express emotion when words are not enough. Through drawing, painting, resin, gouache and expressive lines, the work explores raw feeling, texture, vulnerability, eroticism, and psychological depth—holding the tension between strength, exposure, and the crude reality of human fragility.
Katrīna Tračuma’s “and yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self” unpacks the “Circle of Life” meme as a cyclical evolution story—comic, bleak, and strangely tender. The series visualises a modern domestic dinosaur, linking present life to ancestral death, from dino nuggets to wrapped flesh.
In Ancient Ground, Anne Martin Walsh reflects on vestiges and indentations—traces in the landscape formed by human intervention and the earth’s natural processes. The accompanying work layers collage, acrylic and oil, holding marks like evidence: part history, part erosion, part memory. Read the full piece in Anecdotes Issue 01.
In Pre-Mobile Era, John Murray considers the human–phone relationship as something symbiotic: we’re attached to our phones, and they’re attached to us. Through drawing and painting, the series records this mutual dependence, anchored by a study of an office secretary from the pre-mobile age.
Lucy Lambe explores censorship and iconoclasm as anxieties about art’s power—how images provoke fear, moral policing, and institutional control. From Michelangelo’s censored nudes to contemporary interventions, the essay argues that restricting art denies its role as mirror, catalyst, and force for change.
Caoimhe Heaney explores the beauty of the breakdown—how change, even when painful, can open space for growth and new meaning. Her layered photomontages hold imperfection gently, finding quiet strength in vulnerability and revealing the unseen beauty and fragility that emerges through transformation.
Nua Artist Katrina Tracuma reflects on her waste-based performance WHAT DO? WHERE AMBULANCE?, using curated plastic trash to confront consumerism and climate guilt.
2024 was a year of creativity, growth, and connection for Nua Collective. From the Blackout international tour reaching six cities to the launch of our visual podcast, Spill the Art Tea, and the unveiling of 19 new artworks in our virtual exhibition, Scatter, we’ve had an incredible year. We also revitalised our website, enhancing our hub for celebrating artists and their voices. With over 11.3k website views, 17 active artists, and 402 artworks in our collection, we couldn’t have done it without your support.
Here’s to creating, connecting, and inspiring in 2025!