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Curator Adriana Farietta On Why CONDUCTOR Is the Fair the Art World Needs Right Now

With onsite fabrication, approachable price points and a focus on equity, it is challenging some of the art world's most entrenched assumptions.

This week, New York City sees the launch of a brand new art fair: CONDUCTOR, at Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Arts. In an art world that seems to be reevaluating all its previous business models, CONDUCTOR is one to watch, “featuring individual artists and galleries across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and Indigenous Nations around the globe, foregrounding critical perspectives from the Global Majority at a decisive cultural moment.” More remarkable is the fact that some of the work for sale this weekend will have been made on site. The fair was curated by Adriana Farietta in collaboration with Powerhouse Arts, and we caught up with her to hear about the practicalities of this ambitious model.

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The onsite fabrication model is a major structural innovation at CONDUCTOR, one that has become increasingly prescient in recent weeks as global trade has become a vulnerability for all kinds of investment. Could you walk us through what that actually looks like for a gallery coming from Dhaka or São Paulo? Who makes what, where, and how far in advance does the conversation start?

This is one of our main strengths at CONDUCTOR. Powerhouse Arts has uniquely robust fabrication facilities all housed within one facility: three premier print shops, a state-of-the-art ceramics program, and an ambitious Public Art department that supports artists fabricating large-scale, technically ambitious artworks, all in a more cost-effective way than most other facilities. These resources offer an incredible opportunity to vertically integrate and fabricate work locally—mitigating a host of shipping, logistics, and customs contingencies.

As the fair is in its very early stages, we’ve had the benefit of working on fabricating one presentation this year: a limited-edition print for artist duo Bugarin Castle to support the interactive video installation Sore Throat, which they will display in the Special Projects section. That conversation started months ago, back in the fall of 2025. In the future, galleries and artists who plan to exhibit with CONDUCTOR should consider speaking with our fabrication teams 6 months in advance. We recognize that this means galleries and artists will need to commit a bit earlier to the fair, but the upside is worthwhile.

A fair centering artists from Palestine, the Amazon, Indigenous nations and the wider Global Majority is opening into a U.S. moment defined by tightened visa rules and aggressive border policy. How has that environment shaped planning, and have any participating artists had trouble getting into the country?

As we organized the fair over the past year, stressors from the administration, whether policy based or rhetorical, added new challenges........

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