Every week, Art to Collect by ArtDependence brings together an exceptional curation of works that reflect the pulse of contemporary art today, offering collectors, new and seasoned alike, a window into some of the most compelling creative practices around the world.https://artdependence.com/art-to-collect/
Collecting art is never simply about acquiring objects; it is about embracing stories, ideas, and sensibilities that deepen one’s way of seeing the world. For many collectors, the most rewarding works are those that combine craftsmanship with narrative depth and art that lingers in memory and transforms a room into a space of reflection.
On ‘Art to Collect’, a platform committed to presenting the most exciting voices in contemporary art, we are highlighting four artists whose works straddle personal history, cultural resonance, and sheer visual allure. They are Bassam Andari, Eva Bazhenova, Dominique Selen and Mukah Ispahani.
Bassam Andari, "Evening Lights", 2025, Oil on canvas
Bassam Andari’s practice can be described as an ode to survival and transformation. Growing up in Lebanon during war, Andari first wrote names of the fallen as a calligrapher before later finding refuge in painting. His canvases convey this tension: beauty rendered not as an escape, but as a restoration.
Now based in the UK, his recent works, shaped by the coastal landscapes of Cornwall, speak of light, renewal, and a refusal to let destruction be the final word. For collectors, owning an Andari is to hold a story of resilience in visual form. His works invite not just admiration but dialogue: what does it mean to create beauty after violence? To collect such a piece is to engage with that very question.
Eva Bazhenova, "Pretty and Tasty" 2015, Oil on canvas
Eva Bazhenova’s pieces offer a quieter seduction. Trained first as an interior designer, she carries a refined sense of composition and atmosphere into her painting. Whether a still life or a portrait, her works glow with restrained elegance—soft, luminous brushstrokes that transform ordinary subjects into meditative presences.
Anyone drawn to works that balance emotion with sophistication will find in Bazhenova a painter whose art feels at home in both contemporary and classical interiors. Her growing international recognition, coupled with her distinctive voice, makes her work a compelling addition to collections that value both serenity and strength.
Dominique Selen, "Unravelling the Knots of Life", 2021, Oil on canvas
With Dominique Selen, one encounters raw dialogue. Her expressionist oil paintings present the human figure as a field of colour, gesture, and emotion—self-portraits and imagined figures alike caught in mid-conversation, mid-conflict, mid-dream. In works such as The Dialogue Debate, identity is not fixed but shifting, layered, and restless.
Collectors looking for pieces that do not sit silently but actively speak in a room will be drawn to Selen’s art. These are not passive works. They demand engagement, sparking emotional and intellectual response every time the eye returns to them.
Mukah Ispahani, "Threads of Tomorrow", 2024, Ballpoint pen (biro) on paper
Using a ballpoint pen, Mukah Ispahani constructs worlds of memory and endurance. His drawings are not quick gestures but slow accumulations. Each mark is layered patiently until the surface begins to hum with presence. Born in Cameroon and now working in the UK, Mukah’s works act as containers of memory, turning ordinary materials into meditations on identity and time. In any space, his art offers intimacy, embodying both craft and collectability. Serious works that reward close viewing and promise long-term resonance. One does not simply hang a Mukah drawing; one lives with it, allowing its layers of time to converse with one’s own.
What unites these four artists is not style, but conviction. Each pursues art as a necessity, whether through memory, resilience, quietude, or expressive force. For collectors, this means acquiring not just aesthetic objects but works born of lived experience and urgency.
On “Art to Collect”, these voices stand as reminders that art is most powerful when it carries stories worth holding onto. To live with a piece by Ispahani, Andari, Bazhenova, or Selen is to live with a fragment of the human condition translated into line, colour, and form. For the discerning art lover, that is the kind of art that endures.