Ali Güreli is an entrepreneur, cultural leader and founder and chairman of Contemporary Istanbul, one of the region’s leading contemporary art fairs. For over two decades, he has championed Istanbul as a global hub for artistic exchange, bringing together artists, institutions, collectors and international audiences. Working at the intersection of art, culture and urban development, Güreli brings valuable insight into the role of creativity in fostering dialogue, shaping cultural identity and building connections across borders.
Anders Petterson is the founder and CEO of ArtTactic Ltd, a London-based art market research and analysis company established in 2001. A pioneer in using crowd-sourcing techniques to gather art market intelligence, ArtTactic publishes global reports in collaboration with partners including Deloitte, Hiscox, Mishcon de Reya, Sophie Macpherson SML, and Sotheby’s. Anders regularly lectures on art market topics at Sotheby’s Institute, Christie’s Education, and ESA Beirut, and served as a founding board member of PAIAM from 2011 to 2021.
Chimere Cissé is an art collector and founder with over a decade of experience in the cultural sector. She launched ArtKōrero in 2021 to connect commercial engagement with the arts and recently founded STELLA Alliance to increase the visibility of women art collectors. Previously, she represented the United Nations International Trade Centre and held senior roles at Burberry, Hearst UK, Harper’s Bazaar, and ELLE. Dedicated to philanthropy, she actively supports global charities including the British Council and Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation, where she is a long-standing committee chair.
Divya Sharma is a London-based British Indian textile artist and an alumna of the Royal College of Art, London. Her practice brings together myth, memory, and the cultural world of her mother tongue, Tamil. She was recently awarded the Visual Artists Association International Scholarship Award for 2025. She has conceived and curated five shows as founder of The Neulinge Collective and the Post-Colonials Collective. She is also the founder and host of the ARTiculate podcast and broadcasts on Apple Podcasts.
Dr. Shwetal Patel is a writer and researcher working at the intersection of contemporary visual art, exhibition-making, and development studies. A founding member of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, he played a key role in launching the initiative and building its international partnerships. He holds a practice-based PhD from the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, and lectures internationally at institutions such as the Zürich University of the Arts, the Royal College of Art, and the University of Exeter. He also serves as trustee for the Milton Keynes Museum, Coventry Biennial, and the Kakar Centre of Psychoanalysis & Culture.
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Leo Crane is a producer, artist and educator with over 25 years of experience across physical and digital creative industries. He has founded three creative studios and in 2024, established the AI Film Academy, focusing on innovation in contemporary moving image practice. He leads courses in art and art business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and serves on the board of Animate Projects. His artistic practice spans animated film, figurative painting and experimental digital works, and his work has been widely exhibited, screened and awarded internationally. He is currently producing his debut feature film The Masterpiece of Tamagata, and is the author of Contemporary Figures in Watercolour (2021).
Mark Davy is the founder of Futurecity, a multidisciplinary agency dedicated to culture-driven placemaking. He has led private sector investment in major art projects including the Crossrail Culture Line, the Illuminated River Project, and the cultural strategy for Wembley Park. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and contributes to several boards and panels, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Advisory Panel, Hypha Studios, the Land Economic Society, the NLA Expert Panel for Culture, and the National Trust Regional Advisory Group.
Marta Orsola Sironi is a curator and critic based between Milan and London. She is co-founder and curator of MEGA Art Fair, which reimagines the art fair as an immersive, curated experience activating regenerated urban spaces with exhibitions, performances, talks, and music. Together with Mauro Mattei, she co-directs BeAdvisors Art Department, producing curated shows, cultural events, and collectors’ programmes across international art calendars. Her research focuses on decolonial feminism, identity, language, and memory, with a strong interest in urban space as a site of resistance.
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Portuguese visual artist Paulo Arraiano explores the intersections of art, culture, nature, and technology through a multidisciplinary practice. He is co-founder of Re_Act Contemporary, an international art laboratory and residency programme based in the Azores that fosters dialogue between artists, researchers, and communities around pressing ecological, social, and cultural issues. Arraiano offers a distinctive perspective on the role of art in shaping how we understand and engage with a rapidly changing world. Portfolio
Rena Neville is Director of Corinth Consulting Ltd and Head of FCS Compliance Art Division. With over 30 years at Sotheby’s, she was the company’s first Global Compliance Director and previously served as European General Counsel and Global Head of Litigation. Today, she advises the art market on anti-money laundering compliance and is a frequent speaker on the subject, including recent talks at Harvard Law School and the Art Business Conference in Maastricht during TEFAF.
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Sigrid Kirk is a curator, adviser, and strategist who co-founded the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA) in 2016. AWITA brings together women working across the arts sector through mentoring, collaboration, and a shared community. In addition, each year Kirk and her husband collaborate with Te Tuhi Gallery in Auckland to help fund an artist residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for Māori and Pacific Island artists. The couple are also patrons of Dundee Contemporary Arts,  Fruitmarket Gallery, Gasworks, Studio Voltaire, Iniva, and Goldsmiths CCA.
Sylwia Krason is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Lynx Magazine, an international arts publication and organisation based in London. Since 2013, she has connected bold artistic voices with global audiences, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe and emerging markets. She is also President of the Contemporary Lynx Foundation in Warsaw and regularly serves as a juror and panel moderator at major international art events, including Art Basel. Trained in art history and arts management in Kraków, Berlin, and London, she is currently based in Paris.
Ulrich Schrauth is a curator, artist, and creative director of UBS Digital Art Museum in Hamburg. Schrauth is also the founder of VRHAM! Biennale, shaping new ways of presenting and experiencing digital Art. Working between Hamburg and London, he also heads the Immersive Programme at the British Film Institute (BFI) and serves on the British Council’s Advisory Board for Arts and Creative Economy. In addition, he curates the digital section of Art Dubai, the premier international art fair for digital media. Ulrich is a jury member for prestigious awards such as the Lumen Prize and the Fedora Digital Art Prize, and is a regular speaker at major events including the Venice Biennale, SXSW, and the Cannes Film Festival. Portfolio

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ARTIST

Divya Sharma

London, United Kingdom

In a world increasingly defined by speed and disposability, Divya’s slow, labour-intensive process functions as an act of resistance and devotion. She conceives her works as transcendental encounters rather than static objects. Through immersive scale, saturated colour, and dense tactility, she invites viewers into a sensorial experience that mirrors her own process - a form of interdimensional time travel in which memory, body, and imagination collapse into one.

Divya is a London-based British Indian textile artist and an alumna of the Royal College of Art, London. Her practice brings together myth, memory, and the cultural world of her mother tongue, Tamil. These strands are woven through labour, colour, composition, and scale, transforming tapestry into a form of text through the act of tufting itself. Rooted in a lifelong love for textiles and texture, her practice was shaped by growing up in India in a home where fabric was not merely material, but language and legacy. Textiles became her earliest mode of storytelling—tactile, rhythmic, and emotionally fulfilling—deeply influenced by her mother, who created fabric sculptures.

As part of the diaspora, Divya uses textiles to reconnect with land, language, and lineage. Her mother tongue and its rich heritage are invisibly embedded through pattern, repetition, and rhythm, allowing cloth to speak where words dissolve. Drawing inspiration from the self-taught techniques of folk artists, she privileges embodied knowledge over institutional authority, insisting that what is personal is also political, and that intimacy itself can be monumental.

By combining tufting with glass beads, Divya explores how surfaces catch and refract light, intensifying both visual and emotional resonance. While tufting is often dismissed as hobbyist or decorative, she reclaims it as a powerful contemporary language—demonstrating that in this revival of textile art, softness, slowing down, empathy, and compassion can be radically urgent.

Divya has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. She was recently awarded the Visual Artists Association International Scholarship Award for 2025. She was also the recipient of the RCA Scholarship Award 2021. She has been part of several juried competitions – Exeter Contemporary 2025, New Art Exchange Nottingham 2024, Textile Triennale Lodz 2022, New Contemporaries 2022 amongst others. She has conceived and curated five shows as founder of The Neulinge Collective and the Post-Colonials Collective. She is also the founder and host of the ARTiculate podcast and broadcasts on Apple Podcasts.

Shape of Identity

150 x 300 cms
Woollen and Acrylic yarn tufted on hessian fabric

Awakening

163 x 168 cms
Woollen and acrylic yarn tufted on hessian fabric with found objects fused on the work

We are all just flesh and blood

200 x 300 cms
Woollen and acrylic yarn tufted on hessian fabric

In the ruins, we remember

100 x 1000 cms
Tufted wool and acrylic yarn on hessian with mixed media and glass beads

Blueprint of Hope

223 x 213 cms
Woollen yarn and mixed media elements tufted on hessian cloth

Highlights

Awards

2024   Wells Contemporary | Wells Cathedral Somerset

2024   Collect | Somerset House London

2023   New Art Exchange Open | NAE Nottingham

2022   New Contemporaries | Ferens Gallery Hull and South London Gallery 2024

2022   Textile Triennale Lodz Poland | Textile Museum Lodz 

2021   RCA Gilbert Bayes Trust scholarship Award

Exhibitions 

2025   Textile is Intelligent (with Emmanuel Boateng) | Brownson Gallery Dept of the Arts and Humanities Manhattanville University Purchase, New York.

2025   Group show | The Royal Over-Seas League | London

2025   Solo show | Liechtenstein

2024   Collect 2024 | Crafts Council, Somerset House, London

2024   Paper Cuts | Birkbeck University Pelts Gallery, London

2024   Garden of Delights on Earth | Gallery 46 Whitechapel, London

2024   Empire, Space and Time | University of Greenwich, London

2024   Rinse & Repeat | Hypha Gallery Stratford

2024   Broken Spaces (with Emmanuel Boateng) | Spud Gallery New Forest, UK.

2024   Wells Contemporary Art Show – Juried competition | Wells Somerset, UK.

2024   Unity – Open Call (group exhibition) | Tom Cox Gallery, London UK

2024   International Artist Exhibition (with Emmanuel Boateng) | Manhattanville College Gallery, New York.

2023   17th International Tapestry Triennale – Juried Competition | Centrale Museum of Lodz, Poland

2023   New Contemporaries – Juried Competition | South London Gallery London

2023   Alumni of Colour Association (AoCA) Exhibition: Diaspora and Belonging – Juried Show | Mother London

2023   The Walls Are See Through – Curated show | Rockingham Community Centre, London.

2023   New Art Exchange (NAE) – Juried Show | Nottingham, UK

2023   Printmaking and Multilingualism | Royal College of Art, London, UK.

2023   Textile is Intelligent (with Emmanuel Boateng) | Koppel Project Hampstead Heath London, UK.

2023   Fragments Folds and Frays (with Emmanuel Boateng) | Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich Galleries, London, UK.

2023   Croydon BID Project | Croydon Council, London, UK.

2022   17th International Tapestry Triennale – Juried Competition | Centrale Museum of Lodz, Poland

2022   New Contemporaries (Group show) – Juried Competition | South London Gallery London

2022   New Contemporaries (Group show, Juried Competition | Hull, UK.

2022   Home Ground (with Chudamani Clowes, Maryam Hina Hasnain, Mariam Habib) | Art Chowk Karachi, Pakistan.

2022   Spread | Turf Projects London UK.

2022   ReContact 2022 | Ankara University, Turkey.

2021   Figure it Out (with Chudamani Clowes, Maryam Hina Hasnain, Mariam Habib) | Lewisham ArtHouse Lewisham London, UK.

2021   Proxy Group Show | Cromwell Place Kensington London UK.

2021   Together it Seams | Standpoint Gallery, London UK.

2020   Haus-a-rest Zine show.

2020   Work in Progress Show Royal College of Art London.

2020   Vasteras International Art Fair, Sweden.

2019   ‘For Money or Love’ Group show Copeland Gallery Peckham.

2019   Degree Show BA (Hons) Wimbledon College of Art.

2018   The Toast Rack, Artisan Bakery & Cafe | Wandsworth | London.

2018   ‘Netflix and chill’ Group show at the Flying Dutchman | Camberwell. 

2018   Neulinge (with Chudamani Clowes, Maryam Hina Hasnain, Mariam Habib) | Crypt Gallery St Pancras King’s Cross, London, UK.

2017   Khajoli Competition final shortlist exhibition | Parliament House London.

2016   Made in Morley, Print Exhibition | Morley College | London.

2016   Portrait Exhibition | Putney Library | London.

2015   Sculpture Exhibition | Kings College School | Wimbledon, London.

2015   Open Studios | Wimbledon Art Studios, London.

2013   Studio 106 Group Exhibition ‘Seven’ | Fulham Broadway, London. 

2013   Fulham Community Centre Exhibition | Fulham, London.

Permanent Exhibitions

SoHo Gallery Art and Design Centre | Sweden

Bollywood Restaurant | Munich

Google Arts and Culture permanent online exhibition

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