ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,

NICODIM GALLERY

& INDEPENDENT CURATOR

Shirley Lai is the Associate Director at Nicodim Gallery, where she has played a key role for over three years across artist relations, sales, exhibition logistics, and international art fair strategy. She is currently curating an upcoming exhibition at Lubov Gallery and maintains an independent curatorial practice focused on amplifying historically marginalized voices, with a particular emphasis on Asian diasporic artists and underrepresented narratives in contemporary art.

Lai holds an Honors B.A. in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed a thesis on Modern Tibetan Art and its political entanglements. Her professional background spans both commercial and institutional settings, including formative roles at Catharine Clark Gallery, Haines Gallery, and the Chinese Historical Society of America, where she developed educational programming and launched an artist spotlight series centering Asian American practitioners. Across her curatorial and administrative work, she is committed to building infrastructures of support for emerging artists and expanding the visibility of diverse perspectives within contemporary visual culture.

INDEPENDENT CURATOR AND DEALER

Maty Sall is a French-Senegalese art dealer and curator based in New York City. Her upbringing between Paris, Dakar, and New York shaped a singular curatorial perspective rooted in cross-cultural aesthetics and conceptual rigor. After early studies at Sorbonne University and completing her BFA at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Sall launched her career at Rosenfeld Gallery, specializing in the secondary market with works by Warhol, Basquiat, and Haring. She then became Director at Paul Nicklen Gallery, where she oversaw collaborations with the UN, WWF, and National Geographic-affiliated artists.

In 2019, she joined Jason Jacques Gallery as Director, leading major curations at Design Miami/ Miami & Basel, TEFAF Maastricht and FOG Design+Art. She spearheaded the gallery’s relocation to Chelsea and curated the inaugural exhibition SMOKE, which raised funds for the Last Prisoner Project. In 2023, Sall became Director at Fridman Gallery, where she expanded the curatorial program and brought in new perspectives. Her 2024 exhibition A Billion Brilliant Points of Unity received acclaim for its exploration of polyculturalism and artistic lineage. Sall’s work champions contemporary African and diasporic artists, challenging reductive narratives and highlighting the Continent’s vast creative contributions to global culture.

CURATORIAL ASSOCIATE, DEPARTMENT OF DRAWINGS AND PRINTS, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Margarita Lizcano Hernandez is a curator and scholar based in New York City focusing on Latin American Art and global artist networks. Currently she's the Curatorial Associate in the Department of Drawings and Prints at MoMA. Prior to that she was at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation as Curatorial Assistant, where she was part of the core team working on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum, focusing on collection management and protocol building, collection strategy research, and proposing works for acquisition. She has presented her scholarship at the Midwestern Art History Conference and the College Art Association. Margarita earned her BA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MA from the Courtauld in London.