Behind the Scenes at “Dinner - A ‘Performance’ by Shalva Nikvashvili
On July 12th, Georgian multidisciplinary artist Shalva Nikvashvili carried out a ‘performance’ titled “Dinner,” commissioned by ADA.PERFORM, an artistic platform fostering encounters between artists, audiences, institutions, and emerging scenes within contemporary art culture. The performance also included the presence of artists Jenna Marvin and Marie Polo.
The work took its cue from the familiar image of family dinners and domestic display, using the ritual as a stage for tension: between the intimacy of a shared meal, political censorship, queer social life, and the performance of daily life.
At “Dinner,” the table becomes a space where censorship and memory collide. Shalva’s work questions what happens when trauma, past experiences and the unspoken accumulate but get edited out of the familial conversation. What is suppressed never vanishes, but lingers as memory, language, and unspoken weight.
For Shalva, the banning of dinner does not merely represent the elimination of food, but the withholding of memory. It means silence, and the presence of the unspoken. It equals a system of compliance.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic
A Shaded View of Fashion Film (ASVOFF) 18th Edition
Since 2008, ASVOFF has brought together filmmakers, critics, students and industry professionals under one premise: that fashion film deserves the same spotlight as any of fashion’s other celebrated practices. Founded by Diane Pernet, ASVOFF acts as the world’s first fashion, culture, and film festival, helping incubate the fashion film genre as a recognized medium. This year’s 18th edition takes place November 12-15 at Dover Street Market Paris, with submissions open until September 30th
through FilmFreeway.
According to Pernet, the films shortlisted by the jury are never simply a depiction of pretty clothes, but touch on broader societal issues, stressing that the work needs to “pass an emotion and have a reason to exist.” This philosophy is reflected in the festival's thematic categories: Mental Health in Fashion, Black Spectrum, Chinese Fashion Films, AI Generated Films, Climate Warriors, Fashionable Intelligence, Student Films, Queer Archive, and Future Vintage.
This year, the jury will be led by one of fashion’s most celebrated milliner, Stephen Jones. Over four decades, this designer has shaped runway history alongside Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, John Galliano, and Christian Dior, and his work has been held in major museum collections and celebrated in exhibitions at the Palais Galliera and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Beyond screenings, ASVOFF is also a moment of networking, panels and live performances, addressing industry questions in line with the themes above. Beyond the Paris event, the festival tours internationally, with screenings at prestigious institutions like the Centre Pompidou, the Barbican, and the Cannes Film Festival, bringing films, documentaries, conferences, performances, and installations to creative capitals around the globe.
Selected filmmakers will be notified October 31st, ahead of the festival's run from November 12–15. Past editions have drawn over 600 submissions from more than 60 countries, with roughly 100 films ultimately selected, a scale that underscores how far ASVOFF's and Pernet’s premise have traveled since its debut in 2008.
Words: Marina Teubal
An Invitation to Dinner: Shalva Nikvashvili's New Performative Installation
On July 12, Georgian multidisciplinary artist Shalva Nikvashvili will present Dinner, a new live performance commissioned by ADA.PERFORM in Paris. Combining sculpture, performance, sound, and theatrical elements, the work reflects on censorship, memory, queer identity, and the rituals that shape everyday life.Set around the familiar ritual of the family dinner table, Dinner turns a domestic gathering into a space where private experience meets political reality. Through immersive sound and theatrical language, Nikvashvili explores how silence, repression, and inherited memories continue to influence the way we live and relate to one another.
The program opens at 5:00 PM with the screening of Who Is Shalva, 2026?, a 30-minute autobiographical documentary offering an intimate look into the artist's practice. The performance begins at 6:00 PM, followed by Baby Party featuring Rosa Peligrosa XXL, Word of Command, and Cellule Mère.
For Nikvashvili, the dinner table is more than a place to gather—it is a site where memory, power, and identity intersect. Dinner invites audiences to reflect on what is left unsaid, what is deliberately erased, and how forgotten stories continue to shape the present.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic
Art-Icon’s “LOVE” Exhibition: An Anthropology of Simulated Affect Arrives in Paris During Art Week on May 26th
Opening during Paris Art Week, contemporary exhibition “Love” transforms the Bastille Design Center into an immersive environment where intimacy, desire, and emotion are viewed through the lens of media, performance, and contemporary visual culture.Presented by Art-Icon from May 26th at 19H, until May 28th, the project brings together the art of renown artists including Marina Abramović, ORLAN, Ai Weiwei, Roger Ballen, Jacob Aue Sobol, alongside other renowned contemporary voices and over 200 emerging photographers. Curated by Slavica Veselinović and Danila Tkachenko, the exhibition approaches love not as a private emotion, but as a constructed system of images, gestures, and affect shaped by contemporary culture.
Spanning photography, installation, video art, and performance, “LOVE” traces the transformation of emotion into visual language — examining how intimacy, desire, and identity are continuously produced, aestheticized, and consumed within contemporary society.
Marina Abramović presenting her seminal 1975 performance work Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful
Marina Abramović, “Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful” (1975)
ORLAN’s radical deconstruction of femininity, identity, and the body
Ai Weiwei’s rare early erotic drawings examining desire and body politics
Roger Ballen’s psychologically charged works exploring darker dimensions of the human psyche
Jacob Aue Sobol’s stark black-and-white portraits balancing rawness and emotional intensity
Alisa Resnik’s haunting photographic works centered on intimacy and melancholy
Zoë Urness’ cinematic visual narratives exploring Indigenous motherhood and spirituality
Marat Guelman and ± Komma’s AI-collaborative project reframing collective fear through aesthetics
Dominique Renson contributes expressive painted works exploring raw human sentiment.
Set within the industrial architecture of the Bastille Design Center, “LOVE” positions itself less as a conventional exhibition and more as a visual research space — one that asks how contemporary culture teaches us to desire, perform, and ultimately consume emotion itself.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic
Jenna Marvin Presents PROPAGANDA, Artist’s First Solo Exhibition in Paris
Jenna Marvin, a performer and visual artist whose work explores the body as a site of transformation, identity, and power, presents her first solo exhibition in Paris, bringing together performance, visual art, and sculptural experimentation.
Opening on December 4, 2025 at Transfo – Emmaüs Solidarité, PROPAGANDA runs through February 7, 2026. The exhibition features a multidisciplinary body of work exploring identity, transformation, and the body as a site of cultural, political, and gender negotiation.
Born in 1999 in Magadan, Russia, Jenna Marvin investigates the body and its transformations through performance, visual arts, and sculptural experimentation. Her work addresses the instability of identity in an era of technological and biological change. The “dismantled” body is central to her practice, serving as a space where cultural, political, and gender tensions are expressed and reconfigured, paving the way for new forms of existence.
Jenna deconstructs traditional symbols of power, authority, and masculinity by introducing fragile, unusual, and striking figures. Her dramatic aesthetic draws on drag activist culture and the Viennese Actionism art movement, with themes of violence, fear, alienation, and despair incorporated into her creations. The expropriated, tortured, and humiliated body is both a central figure in her work and an instrument for reclaiming a chosen identity.
Performance is a key component of PROPAGANDA, with live actions on December 4 and December 6, bringing the exhibition to life. In addition, Jenna will present a performance at Fondation Fiminco, extending her multidisciplinary practice into another major contemporary art platform in Paris.
With PROPAGANDA, Jenna Marvin offers a body of work that explores the possibilities of transformation, identity, and the body, inviting audiences to engage directly with her experimental approach to performance and visual art.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic
A Shaded View on Fashion Film (ASVOFF) 17th Edition Starts Today at Dover Street Market
Founded by the visionary, Diane Pernet, A Shaded View on Fashion Film (ASVOFF) festival has, over the years, established itself as a leading platform at the intersection of fashion and film. ASVOFF has grown into an international showcase highlighting creativity, innovation, and cultural exchange. The 17th edition opens today, November 13, and runs until November 16, 2025, at Dover Street Market Paris.
This year’s edition is guided by Jury President Willy Chavarria, whose work blends activism, social consciousness, and craft. Chavarria’s Californian roots and his design practice, which fuses tailored menswear with Chicana culture, reflect a commitment to representation and storytelling. His leadership underscores the festival’s emphasis on humanism and engagement, and highlights fashion film as a medium for exploring identity, culture, and contemporary issues, continuing ASVOFF 17’s tradition as a platform for independent, hybrid, and socially conscious creative voices in an era of rising conservatism.
A Bold, Thematically Sharp Edition
ASVOFF 17 already stands out for its bold and sharply defined thematic approach. The festival dives into today’s realities by exploring pressing topics such as mental health in fashion, films created by artificial intelligence, and fashion activism. Through the perspectives of international curators, the event also highlights queer archives, the Black Spectrum, climate warriors, Chinese cinema, and emerging student talents.
Beyond its screenings, ASVOFF 17 acts as a forum for conversation. Live performances and panel discussions address the industry’s most urgent questions, with social impact themes at their core. A dedicated panel on Mental Health in Fashion, led by Florian Müller, brings awareness to well-being across creative fields. The Queer Fashion Film Award, in collaboration with The Queer Archive, celebrates films that explore queer identity, while Fashion Intelligence examines how technology is reshaping the future of fashion storytelling.
The artistic vision and innovation of the new fashion film narratives will be evaluated by a prestigious panel including:
· Willy Chavarria – ASVOFF 17 President, Fashion Designer
· Pascal K. Douglas – Writer and Content Creator
· Irina Pantaeva – Model/Actress
· M.J. Harper – Multimedia Artist, Dancer, Movement Director, Choreographer, Creative Director
· Matières Fécale – Designers/DJs Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton
· Elias Medini (Ly.As) – Fashion Narrator/Influencer
· Manish Arora – Fashion Designer
· Marc Ascoli – Artistic Director
· Martine Sitbon – Fashion Designer
· Pierre A. M’Pélé (Pam Boy) – Fashion Writer and Magazine Editor, Founder of SCRNSHT
· Tristan Hickey – Production Coordinator
· Toby Grimditch – Fashion Editor, Stylist, Creative Director, Editor in Chief 10 Magazine Germany
· Pam Hogg – Fashion Designer
· Eric Daman – Costume Designer
· Jenna Marvin – Performance Artist
· Raphaël Aviges – Personal Creative Director
These jurors bring extensive expertise, ensuring that each film is evaluated with both artistic rigor and cultural insight.
The festival opens tonight, November 13, with a welcome from Willy Chavarria, live performances, and world premieres. November 14, 15, and 16 feature curated screenings across all thematic sectors, offering audiences a journey through global fashion cinema. The festival will conclude on November 16 with the closing night, celebrating the most innovative and impactful fashion films while honoring creativity, diversity, and artistic vision.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic
Paris Photo 2024: Our selection of the fair’s most impactful imagery
One of the world’s most renown photography fairs, Paris Photo, reclaims its place in the Grand Palais this year, once again weaving art and allure under its glass roof. Here, photography steps beyond the frame. An art of arresting moments, quiet provocations, and storied gazes. From fresh voices to iconic names, the fair unfolds a visual dialogue worth a lingering look. Have a look at the EDGELINE’s exclusive selection of some of the most striking photos.
Carmen Calvo, Ella ha sido hallada, 2003
Kourtney Roy, Last Paradise, Gastone 19, 2024
Irving Penn, Mascara Wars, 2001
Victor Vasareli, Contes, 1931 - 1932
Courtesy Mari Katayama Studio & Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve,
Tee A. Corinne, TBC, 1965
Aneta Grzeszykowska, Selfie 7b, 2014
Zofia Rydet, Phantoms, from the World of Feelings and Imagination cycle, 1975–1979