Elsa Åkesson in Conversation with Kamiar Maleki
Art collector for the past 17 years and curator for the past 6 years, Kamiar Maleki is the Director of VOLTA Art Fairs with fairs in Basel, Miami and New York. Most recently, he has curated Present The Future, the first Art Residency focused purely on the creation of NFTs with a collaborative contribution of contemporary and digital art and music in France together with Four Seasons and Armand de Brignac.
MADE IN BED’s Editor-In-Chief, Elsa Åkesson speaks to Kamiar Maleki on his experience with art collecting, his first foray into art fairs, his curatorial projects and VOLTA’s future projects.
Elsa Åkesson: Kamiar, thank you very much for accepting the interview for MADE IN BED, it is an honour and pleasure to have you amongst us today to share your knowledge and experience of the present art world. How did you start collecting art and what triggered your interest in doing so?
Kamiar Maleki: I’m very privileged to come from an art collecting family. My parents have been collecting for the past 35 years so I have grown up in this world. When I was in college, my father gave me and my brother a little budget to buy art with. Before buying a piece, we would have to go to my father and tell him exactly why we wanted to buy the piece. We would then buy it together. If we wanted to sell a piece it was the same process, we would have to tell him why we would want to sell the piece, and any profit made from the acquisition would go back into the fund and only be allowed for further art purchases.
EÅ: Can you tell us the story of the very first artwork you bought and why you chose that work?
KM: My first purchase was by a young Japanese photographer called Tomoaki Makino. It was a photograph of a lady holding a handle with the Iranian colours (green, white and red), so it drew me to it. It is a work I still own, however my collection’s theme today is very different to the photograph.
EÅ: What does your collection consist of today?
KM: I would say it is very mixed. Over the years taste changes - visions change. However, the core of my collection remains ‘emerging art.’ I like to discover talent, work with them and see them grow.
EÅ: When collecting art, do you tend to buy one piece and move your interest to other artists, or do you like to keep up to date with the artist and purchase a second piece later on?
KM: I would say buying repeat works is the next stage of collecting. When you first collect, you are just looking to have one piece. When you mature and are more involved in the industry, there are certain artists you like more and you go back for another piece.
EÅ: If you had to pick one work from your collection today as your favourite, which one would it be and why?
KM: That is very tough to say. There are two or three pieces which define my art collecting career. For example, there is a work I bought around 2013 off Instagram, which lead to the first ever show I curated on buying and selling art on Instagram called #ABSTRACT, in 2015. That launched my curatorial career.
In terms of ‘visual’, I love a Ida Ekblad work that I have, which is a graffiti piece with a SpongeBob bottle on it; it is in the centre of my house. I also collect many Scandinavian artists. I don’t have one favourite artist per say, but I have certain artworks that are very important because they mark certain points in my collecting career.
EÅ: For new art collectors looking to build their own collection, what advice would you give from your 17 years of collecting?
KM: Buy what you love. The art market is an unregulated market, so what could be valuable today may not be tomorrow. So, you always have to buy what you love.
My second piece of advice is, do as much research as you can. Go to the galleries, read the PDF’s that they hand out and talk to the people at the events. Information is power. Information is the one thing that helps you validate the decision you will make on the purchase of a work. Educating yourself is key.
EÅ: Today, you are the Director of VOLTA Art Fairs - was there a particular aspect of the art fair business model that triggered your interest in the field?
KM: When you are a collector and you are so involved in the industry, you want to do more with it and be active in it. You must find yourself a position that does not impact your collecting status, but also enhances the relationships you have with art galleries, museums, institutions and auction houses. Running an art fair can be considered a diplomatic position, where you manage all these [various business] models, bringing them in one place.
EÅ: What is the main criteria you look for in galleries and artists when curating an art fair?
KM: It changes with the city you are in and the relationships that you have. Our main focus is discovery. It is about showcasing art that allows you to discover something you wouldn’t necessarily see in other art fairs.
EÅ: VOLTA is present in Basel, Miami and New York; which of the 3 markets do you find most exciting and why?
KM: For me, they are all exciting, that is one of the reasons why I accepted this offer. Right now, Miami is the crypto capital of the world so I think Miami will have a very important role to play in VOLTA’s future, and Basel is my biggest challenge because it is very conservative.
EÅ: How has VOLTA coped with the pandemic?
KM: The pandemic gave us the time to sit down, strategise and look at the opportunities we have in front of us. We decided to strengthen the core brand of VOLTA. We changed the logo, the image, the branding and the language to make it fresher, younger and more approachable. It has been very challenging but very fun at the same time.
EÅ: You previously mentioned that you are currently working on the curation of an art residency focused purely on the creation of NFTs. Can you tell us more about this?
[The residency] is a follow up from my show #ABSTRACT, which I did 6 years ago. The new movement of NFT’s happened about a year and a half ago, so six months ago artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar and I decided to work together. He was arranging a show with musician Tinie Tempah, they wanted to do a show on music and art, and when the NFT craze started we thought it would be a great collaboration between three industries: music, art and digital art. So, this is what we did, and following this residency program we produced NFT’s which dropped on the 21st of July, on Nifty Gateway together with another auction house. It was the first of its kind.
Thank you very much, Kamiar Maleki.
Image courtesy of VOLTA Art Fairs.
To discover more about VOLTA Art Fairs visit their website and their ‘Present the Future’ Residency Program.
Elsa Åkesson,
Editor-in-Chief, MADE IN BED