ISE - DA

Members of ISE-DA's New Collectors' Program joined our inaugural Temperature Check trip to São Paulo last September — a week immersed in African diasporic art and culture, connecting with international collectors, curators, and artists across the diaspora.

ISE-DA's New Collectors' Program assists Black professionals with building their art collections with curated resources, dedicated art advisory and collection strategy, and access to acquiring works by Black artists across the diaspora. Members of our program receive priority access to our Temperature Check research trips and further opportunities.

Enrollment for Spring/Summer 2026 is now open and closes Monday, March 16th.

🔗 Link in bio to join.

Notes from Marrakesh.

Earlier this month, ISE-DA traveled with a member of our New Collectors Program to attend the Marrakesh edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Having previously engaged with the fair’s London and New York editions, the invitation to Marrakesh marked our first encounter with an art fair on the African continent.

In addition to the fair, the visit included institutional and cultural site visits to Le MAP – Musée des Arts de la Parure, MACAAL, and the Montresso Foundation, where we reconnected with Brazilian artists-in-residence first met in São Paulo last year.

Expanding our perspective on the work of Black Moroccan artists and the local contexts shaping contemporary practice, the trip served as a welcome continuation of ISE-DA’s ongoing field research across the African diaspora.

Experiences like this inform our advisory work and ensure our community remains connected to the cultural and market ecosystems shaping African and diasporic art globally.

Closing today! Towards a m̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶f̶u̶l̶ loving praxis, we cast seeds into the darkness by Alberta Whittle

Location: Nicola Vassell Gallery at 138 Tenth Avenue New York, NY 10011. 

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Pictured: 

Installation Photos by Lance Brewer

Terra Nullius is not a Defence, 2025

Portals for New Beginnings (Indigo Heartbeats), 2025 

Our Breath is the Coil that Connects Us, 2025

Through a series of collaged paintings, watercolors, sculptures, and video, Whittle has created a group of works that, through their variegation and visual abundance, respond to the uncertainty of our times by reaffirming love, intimacy, and connection as necessary acts of resistance. Informed by her study of pre-colonial history, Whittle’s interdisciplinary practice has long been focused on developing hybrid forms that encourage historical curiosity while also rehabilitating our capacity for interspecies relationships not grounded in exploitation. In thinking about the degradation of togetherness and collectivity in our contemporary moment, Whittle has fashioned the term ‘motherful’ to express an expanded, genderless sense of care and support between people and species more generally, a concept her works enact through their formal relationships and material complexity.

At ISE-DA, every month is Black History Month, and nothing makes us happier than the community we’ve built across the African diaspora. From conversations with Tschabalala Self and Brandon Blackwood to gallery and studio visits, global art fairs including the Bahamas, our founder’s cultural immersion in São Paulo with Latitudes, and more, 2024 was all about deepening and growing this community with care and intention.

We are incredibly grateful for the vibrant network we’ve cultivated and the relationships that continue to strengthen across the globe. As we look ahead to 2025, we’re excited to keep expanding and engaging with you. Stay tuned—there’s so much more to come!

ISE-DA's New Collectors' Program is now open for membership!

Our program is a membership for Black professionals interested in art collecting. Assisting Black professionals with acquiring, understanding, and supporting Black cultural production, our program provides a space to learn more about the process of art collecting and the wider art ecosystem. Our program includes events such as private studio visits, exclusive gallery tours, and access to available work by Black artists globally.

Through our program, ISE-DA has helped Black professionals acquire/commission works from Black artists from countries including Haiti, Senegal, Tokyo, Nigeria, and the United States.

The sign-up window to join for Fall/Winter 2024 closes on October 10th, 2024, or until the program is at capacity.

Sign up link in bio 🔗

Pictured: ISE-DA New Collectors Program Tour at Sotehbys, Spring 2024.

In January, ISE-DA team members and traveled to Trinidad for to engage with the Black artistic landscape across the island. We were welcomed into artist 's studio, where we explored the inspirations behind his paintings that bridge abstraction and figuration.

wrote about the studio visit for Elephant. Read more via the link in our bio 🔗