Tessa Liebman is an artist and chef who has been cooking in her hometown of New York City for over twenty years. Through her work as a chef and caterer, she began to recognize the power of the senses to guide perception, elicit memory and emotion, and introduce new information, channeling these observations into a multidisciplinary art practice. She works extensively with the olfactory, and has collaborated with artists and perfumers as a “sensory translator,” interpreting their materials and stories through forms she knows well: food and drink.
Liebman develops conceptual, multisensory, and interactive installations, gatherings, and experiences. Her practice considers how small and subtle shifts in where we place our attention might change our relationships to our bodies and surroundings. She engages participants in sometimes “sneaky” ways, using sensory encounters to draw attention to their own reactions, associations, and cultural biases. Drawing on longstanding interests in sociology, psychology, and art history, her work explores the senses as tools for presence, curiosity, and connection, particularly within our current attention economy.
Liebman’s many projects include workshops on food, the senses, and storytelling; Methods & Madness, a ticketed dinner series developed through collaborations with artists, designers, perfumers, baristas, foragers, printmakers, and other creative practitioners, with menus informed by their processes (their “methods”) and inspirations (their “madness”); and Scents of Plates, a project that uses food and fragrance to translate stories, ideas, and memories from one sense to another. Her ongoing Multisensory Experience Kits offer playful tools for engaging the senses while thinking about our personal and collective past, present, and future. Led by intuition and curiosity, Liebman often follows questions and ideas, allowing one project or encounter to generate the next. Across these forms, she is interested in what can happen when we redirect our attention toward our own senses, one another, and the world immediately around us, and in the possibilities for connection and agency that might follow.
Mari Nagem (b. Belo Horizonte, Brazil) is a multidisciplinary artist conceptually driven by the relationship between nature and technology. She has been awarded numerous international fellowships, commissions, and residencies, including: S+T+Arts Buen-TEK Residency (Rome, IT and Fortaleza, BR, 2026); a public commission for COP30 by the Tomie Ohtake Institute for the Emílio Goeldi Zoobotanical Park and Museum (Belém, BR, 2025); commissions for Mostra 3M (São Paulo, BR, 2024) and SFER IK Museion (Tulum, MX, 2024); the Celia and Wally Gilbert Fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (US, 2024); the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Program (US, 2024); and the Ox-Bow Program Fellowship (US, 2022). She has been nominated for and received awards from Ars Electronica (S+T+Arts, 2026 and CIFO, 2024), the Pipa Prize (2024), and the Marcantonio Vilaça Prize (2021).
Nagem has participated in Latin American biennials, including Bienal Sur at the Macro Museum (Argentina) and the Digital Art Biennial (Brazil). She has had solo exhibitions at Cave Galeria (Fortaleza, 2026), Galeria Lume (São Paulo, 2024), and Paço das Artes (São Paulo, 2022), among others. Her work has been shown at Tomie Ohtake Institute, SESC, Oi Futuro, MAC Niteroí, the Museum of Image and Sound (BR); MESH Art Center, Selva, Berry Campbell Gallery, Flatiron Project Space, New York Live Arts (US); Savvy Contemporary (DE); Sea Foundation (NL); and festivals such as FILE, Die Digitale Düsseldorf, and Athens Digital Arts Festival.
Nagem’s projects and exhibitions have been featured in Art Dialogues Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Arte!Brasileiros, Estadão, Revista Select, and Brazil-based cultural television network Arte1, among others. She holds an MFA from the Haute École d'Art et Design de Genéve, and currently lives and works between New York and Brazil.
Related Exhibition
To learn more about The Tropics, The Moon, and Mars, a solo exhibition by Mari Nagem, see here.
