Cultural Diplomacy

(What You’ll Find) On the Way to Becoming is not a play that explains itself. It creates a shared space and observes what happens when people are trusted to arrive on their own terms. Participation is invited, never required. Stillness is as valid as movement. What unfolds is not spectacle, but attention — collective, unranked, and quietly transformative.

Adaku. In Igbo, it means “first daughter.” In Zürich this week, it means something else too: a gathering, an experiment, a pop-up that insists food is never just food. When Naomi Adaku Biaduo said the word to me, it felt less like a brand than a confession — rushed but intentional, unprepared yet honest. Adaku is her second name, but also her claim: the first-born of a vision years in the making. From a sold-out cookbook in 2017, co-created w/chefs across West Africa, to Uch

When The Bishop Gallery touched down in Basel for its debut at VOLTA Art Fair 2025, it was not merely a new pin on the map—it was a...

This wasn’t a performance. It was a soft intervention and the creation of a collective energy leveling field.

That’s how the inaugural edition of Artistic Conversations • began—hosted inside The Artistic, the cultural wing of Zurich’s most future-forward co-working space, HeadsQuarter. No panels, no hierarchy, no pretense. Just a collective container for conversation—for artists, producers, musicians, curators, thinkers, and those who build culture with their hands and hearts.

Markets have histories. Aesthetics have power. And geopolitics are embedded in the movement of objects, people, and narratives—whether explicitly declared or subtly encoded.

Michael had read Sticker Diplomacy — the piece I wrote after first stumbling into Lim’s gallery — and reached out. We’d been in touch that week. And now, he simply showed up. No fanfare. No expectations. Just presence. His work hung behind us. Funnily enough — so did his testicles.