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Peter Bauman: Hello everyone, and welcome to this Le Random podcast. I'm your host, Peter Bauman, the Editor-in-Chief of Le Random. And today we are continuing our special Friday podcast episodes with a really interesting conversation with Dr. Mimi Nguyen.
And as always, these are companion episodes to our Monday editorials. And this Monday, we had a really special piece that was months, really, in the making with Alexander Mordvintsev and the incredible Karl Sims. They had a fascinating conversation about A-Life and its potential for today that I really enjoyed. Mordvintsev compared A-Life today to NeurIPS 20 years ago, so super interesting conversation.
But today, I'm very fortunate to chat with Mimi, someone I have a huge amount of respect for and who's had an incredible year in 2025, which we go over in the call, but from opening a new gallery in London to fully participating in the global fair circuit to the digital sector in Paris Photo to now Zero 10 at Art Basel Miami, and on top of having two galleries and an online space as well. It was a busy year.
We also talk about sentiment and mismatches or potential mismatches with reality or creative reality today. I get her take on outreach and growing the space because she's really there on the ground and at the forefront doing it. Really, I think she's one of the most pertinent people to ask a lot of these questions to. So I'm really excited to not only have this chat, but to share it. So let's begin.
Yeah, let's start with why you're here. And a really interesting and I think unique background. You have a PhD from Imperial College. Can you tell us about maybe that experience and then how that led you to becoming where you are now, the gallerist and representative?
Mimi Nguyen: The biggest challenge for me was even before the PhD. I was studying statistics, and it was called quantitative method. It's basically econometrics and stats, which actually is quite helpful to understand generative art, because a lot of generative artists, pioneers, they were mathematicians. There is this background there. But then at the same time, I was studying in art school. I was doing basically two majors in different schools, one in economics and one in the art school in Poland, in Berlin and then in the UK. And art was always my, let's say, hobby, I would say. So something that I would do on the side. And then, of course, I would work in finance because that's where you go when you study maths.
The PhD came because I finally found a combination, a direction that was bringing these two worlds together. It was a PhD in Design Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering. So there are elements, of course, of design theory, and it was in partnership with the Royal College of Art, one of the really good art schools in the UK, but also have a strong engineering foundation from the Imperial side.
And what I realized is that it helps me a lot now when dealing with both art and tech, because even on things like designing a booth and understanding the power and the lumens that are emitting from, I don't know, LED video walls and stuff, having this more engineering mindset helps setting up the technical side a little bit easier.
NFTs came during this PhD, and it was really fascinating for me because I could understand suddenly that I can have a career, professional career, that oscillates around art, but also uses my background in tech, engineering and math.
Peter Bauman: That's how you got into your initial forays into NFTs.
Mimi Nguyen: Yeah. That's interesting. Of course, I got into NFTs because of crypto and DeFi. I got into crypto in late 2017. Of course, naturally, there were the times of Rarible for me, and it was the very early beginning. I got scammed a few times and I had a break.
In the meantime, I got a job at Central Saint Martins, which is the University of the Arts London. I started to invite a lot of NFT artists to speak to my students. That's how I started to even learn more about their practices and NFT art in general. And this is where I started working with Verse as a founding member, bringing the network that I built up through actually my university that I teach at.
Peter Bauman: So when was that that you were introducing your students to artists? And do you remember which artists they were?
Mimi Nguyen: The first one was with Simon Denny. We had a symposium in 2021 with Arthur Breitman from Tezos, Simon Denny, someone from Sotheby's Metaverse. That was the era when Alex was still in Flash Art. There was more trapped because that's how we wanted to start that. It was like a university-wide symposium.
Then, of course, in 2022, we expanded that into a series of different talks with Robert Alice, with Mario Klingemann and Matt DesLauriers, Operator. But the first one was very early 2021, and I still think it was quite a magical moment.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, that was a very different time, 2021. For everyone, a magical moment.
And that leads to the next question, which is that I'm just curious about how overall you see the space and understand the space, because people can tend to get a little bleak, especially on Twitter, when crypto prices go down. But then that seems to, especially these days, be in contrast to what I feel like is a lot of vitality in the space, a lot of inroads that we thought might take years but are happening now in just 2025 that are pushing the space forward in really interesting ways that we'll also talk about and get into.
There just seems to be this disconnect between something that's fairly arbitrary, which is a price movement of currencies, and then something that isn't arbitrary, something that is tangible that you can actually see happening, which is that this movement is really beginning to flourish, especially on the digital side. I'm wondering, how do you see that disconnect and how do you think about what's happening now in the digital space with art and that sentiment?
Mimi Nguyen: That was funny because in that first talk I did in 2021, someone at the panel said that the crypto prices will not affect the art prices. That was actually someone from Tezos. We all know what happens now a few years later when things were worth hundreds of thousands. Of course, because of the exchange rate, they are nominally worth less now, which is a very interesting comment, actually.
I think the disconnect for me, it's actually less about the pricing, but about what we socially perceive as art, because there is this market-driven, as you said, signal that defines what is a high-value asset, also called art. That's not something that is only in our space, but also in the traditional art, where you're paying this for millions and then no one understands why it's going for that for young emerging artists.
There is still a lack of a set of protocols or common understanding between how we actually value these pieces, because they are often driven by big voices on social media or Excel tables of a fund analyst. And them being indexed. And of course, that's represented very clearly through Blur, when you don't even see the image because it doesn't matter.
So it's quite funny because on one side, you have traders who are defining actually market movements. And again, I don't think this is something bad because this is what's happening in every market, actually in traditional market, in luxury goods market. But we have also a very big issue with the definition of taste.
On the other hand, the biggest struggle for me is bringing that to the traditional art world, because there's this whole news about crypto entering Art Basel. This is the first time that we are on the main floor of the grand slam of the art fairs. From my side, when I'm trying to showcase new media, different media, like smart contract as a medium and maybe less focused on the JPEG side of the art, but more on the concept side. I just read today that it's a word salad, what we're trying. It's led through the need that I am communicating with a slightly different audience now. We're talking about traditional art collectors, traditional art curators, traditional art journalists. And I'm working along the lines there, whereas the other side that we have with the social media should actually be translated into that.
Then at the end, it doesn't matter because there's such a big taste division of, is art something that just visually looks good or something that is conceptually relatively strong or something that just sells well?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, there does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between sometimes social media influencers' accounts, tastemakers and then what's happening in the contemporary art world. It does seem like if there was a greater facilitation and dialogue between those entities, that it would improve the system generally.
Well, I wonder how you think about the sustainability of the current ecosystem. I think you have a good sense of it as someone who's deeply entrenched. How do you think about how sustainable this is and maybe any directions that you see it going in that way?
Mimi Nguyen: For me, it was interesting to learn about this space from a platform point of view when I was at Verse. Because, of course, platforms have different rules, and it's very guided by the market. Of course, we were in a really nice time, 2022, 2023, where it was just very exciting to present, for example, emerging artists who are coming up and introduce them to a wider group of collectors. Whereas now when there's a different market, as you said, the filter has focused a lot on liquidity of specific names of artists.
That is very aligned, actually, with, as you said, the sustainability of the whole system, because if things are driven mainly by, and especially in the art world, in the whole knowledge space about art, and when it is driven mainly by the level of liquidity of an asset, which is the artwork in this case, it could seem a little bit short-sighted and it takes away everything that art has to offer.
We can see that the movements that are happening are often in favor of things that are more liquid than, for example, things that are more experimental. I understand it because it's a more risky investment, of course, from a collector's point of view.
For the whole digital space to last longer and to actually make a standpoint for a wider art world, it is very tricky right now because we can't offer interesting works because such artists, they don't get enough support if they're experimenting with things that are so conceptual and so difficult to explain on Twitter and so difficult to even fit in these 280 characters. It's easier for me to get these works into a museum than to actually sell them. But on the other hand, artists need also to survive as human beings. And if we cannot support practices like that, we'll just end up with icons that are tradable. And it will just take longer for us to make a case for blockchain as a medium or in general, for digital art.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. It seems like one of the ways to make the space more long-term sustainable is for there to be better education about some of this experimental work, and then also for maybe collectors to also consider work that is more on the experimental side.
Mimi Nguyen: I don't want to bash people on that. I completely understand their situation because it's not just that the market is bad. The whole market is bad. Tech stocks are going down. People in general just have less disposable income. And just to tell someone to buy something that is by an emerging artist that is also very difficult to explain to even your friends, it is really a hard sell. I understand why parting with a few thousands of your household income, it's just too big a question to ask people.
“It's easier for me to get these works into a museum than to actually sell them. But on the other hand, artists need also to survive as human beings.” — Mimi Nguyen 12:51
And that's why I think this is a moment, and I'm quite excited, where institutions do look at this, as we talked about, experimental pieces, the pieces that look specifically into blockchain as a medium. And hopefully that will last longer. And in 10 years, we'll look back and we can say, oh, this artist was acquired by this museum, and that was a signal. Normal people will follow these traditional signals, and that is actually a very interesting way to onboard more people to our space.
Peter Bauman: I think museums can get a bad rap sometimes in this space, but they don't care about the liquidity. They do actually care about the content and the concept of the work. I do think they're an important signal in that way.
Well, speaking of museums, you've had a big year yourself, you and your gallery. You pronounce your last name Nguyen, right?
Mimi Nguyen: You should pronounce Nguyen, but I say Nguyen myself.
Peter Bauman: Nguyen Wahed, it's had a huge year. You've had also work from artists that you've represented that has gone into museums, so you know about that firsthand. You've been part of the global gallery circuit. You've had this new London gallery opening. You just finished up at Paris Photo. You've got NADA Miami coming up. You've also got Art Basel Miami coming up with this new Zero 10 digital section. Basically constantly shows, or most of the time you have shows in your physical spaces in New York and London. You have online shows that are not always running, like with artists like Lauren Lee McCarthy. You've had a busy, I think, full year.
I just would like to know, looking back a little bit, what have you learned? What are your takeaways from this year? What do you think that your actions this year have revealed about the space?
Mimi Nguyen: Oh, gosh. Yes. When you listed all of the space, it sounds like I'm a mad person. The year was actually quite long. When the year ends, I think we will be at seven art fairs this year, which is the craziest thing. Again, I cannot regret the amount of travels that I had to do. Of course, flying back and forth to New York every month was also quite challenging as well.
What I actually learned is that I was going with the speed or the pace of a platform, almost. As you said, there were so many shows and releases and online shows and art fairs on top. And especially in a market like the one this year, it calls for a longer, reflective process.
And this is why I opened the London location, because I wanted the shows in New York to take longer time to brew and to actually get some communication out. There's a show that I did with the Polish government right now in New York, and it's still running. It's two months. And it allowed us to reach out to press and get traditional mainstream press, because if there's a show for a week, there's no chance we can get a print issue of the Brooklyn Rail that is covering and reviewing the shows.
Also, that helped me to connect with museums and to collectors, because they can always come back. We had a show of Leander Herzog for two months as well this year. I remember Jeff Davis came literally on the last day. It was just the fact that the show was running so long. There are always people in New York, so they somehow happen to be people transiting or visiting. It's nice to see people who are able to just, coincidentally, be in New York and then see shows. We had Sidi Vanetti, who works with Andreas Gysin, visiting the qubibi show. It's not like he flew especially for the show, but he happened to be in New York that week. That's something that I'm really looking forward to.
Of course, you need to balance that with the survival of the gallery if the show is running long enough. I was thinking of the cost of running a physical space in a city like New York and London.
What I really tried to do this year with art fairs was... We're a very young gallery. It has one year, and I just really wanted to test and see how is it to go to all these art fairs and talk to people and get the name out.
Actually, Paris Photo was one of the most fun weeks I had because we are always put into this digital sector, which is quite frustrating because we're already being put... I don't know, I guess it's like a weird something small new that is on the side, and the traffic is like one-tenth of what is happening on the main sections. Just the fact that it's already labeled differently gives people some bias when they approach the booth.
But in Paris, what we did is we just went down the line, black and white photography. When we spoke with Yatreda last year about it, we actually planned that the work was supposed to be so slow in movement that you even wouldn't notice that they are moving. And that's exactly what happened. People were approaching the booth, and even after five minutes of talking to me, they just realized that the work is moving.
And this is the easiest way to explain to them what is digital art. Because they came, they're like, oh, yeah, that's just like black and white portrait. And then they came and said, oh, shit, this is digital. How do I show this? And they started a lot of conversations, and I think the average age of people that I sold to this year in Paris Photo was 75, which is amazing. It's fascinating. I never had this before.
And it's a very slow process. And I hope artists understand that because two years ago when we were in Paris Photo, of course, the work that went to a Parisian collector was a luminogram, traditional photographic technique, analog technique made in a dark room. That's something that they resonate with and they're familiar with. But that was one work. Every year, it gets a little bit better. It's from one to four. Hopefully, next time it's five. That's something, fingers crossed for Art Basel.
“People were approaching the booth, and even after five minutes of talking to me, they just realized that the work is moving.” — Mimi Nguyen 19:50
I think that's good enough because they will tell their friends. I came to this 85-year-old guy's house in Paris and installed the USB into his screen. This is what his friends will see in his house. This is how we have a chance to grow our space. Otherwise, it's just going to be us on Twitter, talking with each other.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, please, no. I'm also wondering, after you've accomplished so much this year, how will you package all that and take it moving forward? What will the next year be like? Will you go to as many? Do you feel the need to go to as many of these fairs? How are you thinking about the future now that you've had such a big 2025, I guess?
Mimi Nguyen: I think for sure I will have to revise each of the fairs and then really be picky of where I'm going to go, where I'm going to spend nine days out of my life sitting in a booth.
What actually gives me a lot to think, and I'm trying to speak to a lot of people about it, and both from the artist side and the collector side, what is the role of a gallery? What is the role that the artists expect me to focus on and the collectors as well?
The dream that I actually, when I set it up, I really wanted to place the right works in the right hands, which is something that has to be built over years. There are some collectors that I've been working with for the last three years, and I understand their taste, and I know what is their collection. It's not like they're buying every single piece, and that's the point, because I want them to get the piece that fits most with what their values are and what they represent, and not just force people down their throats with pieces that they don't want. That's something that, of course, I think will take many, many years.
It would be nice if I could sell to their kids. Right now, I'm selling to someone, to Fanny's parents, which is, again, quite really cool. And then maybe in 10 years, her kids will be collecting digital as well. And understanding the family collection is really quite an exciting role as a curator.
So with artists, I am really trying to rethink what is the thing that they want me to keep working on, because I realized that my role became technical. When I'm selling a painting or a sculpture, the object just appears in the gallery. I'm hanging this up and that's it. And then my only thing is like, okay, I need to just ship it to someone. Sometimes I just Uber the thing. But suddenly it becomes a real-time generative artwork on blockchain. It's me learning how to set up an LED wall with 100 cables behind each panel and then mapping. It's so technical that suddenly I realized that I'm a tech support person. We recently learned how to even swap a panel in the LED wall because one pixel was broken.
It changes the whole function and job of a gallery because I'm not just shipping things in crates anymore, but we're actively involved also in the production of the piece. We're deciding how people are experiencing the piece. Is it on this type of screen or this immersive display, or is it on the iPhone? I don't know, little things like that. But that's the decision that actually influences purchasing behavior.
I'm actually curious, what do you think? What do you think is the next model of a gallery?
“It's so technical that suddenly I realized that I'm a tech support person. We recently learned how to even swap a panel in the LED wall because one pixel was broken.” — Mimi Nguyen 23:20
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I think that's interesting, how the realities of a digital gallery today and basically what you need to achieve in terms of presentation, and that your background is specifically helping you for better or for worse as the tech person. But yeah, I think that that's true, that gallerists, if museums are struggling to integrate the digital in because of all the technical problems and the lack of people who have those skills, I think galleries are going to struggle even more. They have to be even more nimble and even more adaptive. They really need people, either you or someone, a team that has the skills, the technical and taste and connection skills that you have.
Mimi Nguyen: But they won't be able to hire these people. I think this is the problem. I mean, with AI, this helps a lot. But let's say a few years ago, to hire a technical person in an industry like art industry or let's say museums or universities, you can't compete with salaries that are in the tech world.
With my PhD, I could work in the Department of Optimization in Amazon. It just has a very clear ladder that goes up after three years, and it's very high because it's a strict... I was interviewing to a department that was specifically optimizing warehouses, and the only people that were allowed to interview were PhDs from Imperial and Oxbridge and ex-military people. So that's already a very good filter of who is going to this department.
The same with AI artists. Good AI artists have enough skills to go to DeepMind and work on them. The salaries are 300K salaries.
And this is the problem that business schools, I know this because I'm teaching at the university, business schools, for example, are fighting for people, intelligent people from economics. These people, again, can go to Goldman Sachs for a half a million salary or teach in a university for a 10th of it. So you have to level out that. All these MBA schools, they dragged up the salaries that an entering junior professor in a business school is exactly the same salary as a Goldman Sachs analyst. It's fascinating. We can never match that in the art world.
Because, or maybe, as I said, maybe with the use of AI, it's going to slightly help and people can faster actually pick up this technical knowledge. It helps me a lot, actually, as well, to learn how to quickly code in a Raspberry Pi. Again, another annoying thing to do. But I guess in the future, it's going to be even more automated and people will be able to deal with... Like, art people will be able to deal with technical things even easier.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. It reminds me of just how companies had to adjust to the internet. I mean, how companies are going to adjust to this new suite of emerging technologies that's now powered by AI is really going to be interesting. But a lot of these traditional galleries are nowhere near even getting to the point, it seems, of even thinking about these questions. There's at least, it seems like, some space to gain an advantage.
Yeah, I'm also interested in how you see this space-wide or scene-wide endeavor to reach out to the public and grow. Do you have any insight into which fairs or which exhibitions, or just in your experience, which have been particularly successful in terms of that outreach? You mentioned Paris Photo. What you have done this year, which has been a lot, what does that tell you about outreach and growing the space?
Mimi Nguyen: For sure, time helps a lot. So Paris Photo, as I said, this is the third edition that I've done, and the third edition, the third year in a row that has a digital sector. So again, if you keep going to Paris Photo as a visitor, you pretty much get used to it after three years. You're like, oh, okay, these guys are showing some digital stuff.
But for example, I went to a bang-on traditional fair, which is Art Brussels. And I wasn't in the digital sector because there is none. That's impossible. And to be fair, I didn't show digital art. I did, actually. Sorry. No, I did show Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler, but it was through this photographic paper installation. When they spoke to me, I showed the digital part of it. But there was a 2.5 meter big installation of 84 analog prints on photographic paper. This is something, again, that was easier for them to understand and then to approach the booth, because if they would see a big TV, it would be quite tricky.
There's like NADA Villa Warsaw. It's very... I mean, there's just paintings there and sculpture. So when I had a big LED wall with Lu Yang, it was just so confusing for people. They didn't even know what to do with it. Yeah, different techniques, because I came with an artist that is known to these people. It's an artist that twice was in Venice Biennale, and once representing a Chinese pavilion. They heard about it. This is someone that they read about in ArtReview, Artforum, Flash Art, all of these articles. So that helps, of course, to start a conversation, at least with institutions.
And I hope that the Art Basel one will continue, of course, for years and years. I believe it will take two years at least to get people just familiar with it, and then slowly they will get more confident to invest in that. And of course, the pricing has to be right because if we're following a price that is almost matching a price of a Rothko piece next door, of course, they would choose an asset of a dead artist that is very easy to resell at an auction house in the future.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, that's an interesting point about whether it's even better to have it fully integrated like it was in Brussels or have it separated.
You've talked about taste and challenges with it, and your role as a curator and as a gallerist and representative is also shaping taste. What is your approach to curating the group of artists that you want to work with and represent? How do you think about which artists you want to work with?
Mimi Nguyen: I mean, we are a very, very young gallery. There are galleries that have 25 years, at least, of operating and experience. But because we're young and we're dealing with emerging medium, it feels a little bit underground. That reminds me of an art school. So you have a clique of people who come together and host their own exhibitions and trying to do something radical.
That's a little bit how this gallery came about, because I was just very close to a few artists, and I like working with them. And we keep working with each other over years and years now, and this is how it panned out. They were asking me about contracts and, of course, decision, who do I work with? It comes naturally because I got introduced to people through artists that I work with. We come together. We want to spend time together, and they support each other as well.
When we had the first show with Addie, we had a group of eight artists flying over to New York just to support her, her show and actually the gallery. We were just doing very small annoying tasks, like washing dishes in the bucket. And that shows that energy that I really, I hope, we'll be able to keep, because otherwise, what's the point? Otherwise, you're a machine that is just selling, releasing to anonymous people. You won't have anything that keeps and binds people together.
I mean, as long as we all have fun and I'm able to help artists to sustain their practice, and in the meantime, also get people to have some nice stuff in their houses. That's something that I hope we will be able to do.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. And maybe this can be the last question. You mentioned that energy to keep up. We talked about how the excitement of the actual work and experimentation of the work is in contrast to, at the moment, falling crypto prices. But it's also in contrast to this economic depression that the traditional art world has been in for a couple of years now.
It's really starting... It seems like for a couple of years, they were just trying to stay afloat. And then now in 2025, there was this precipice where a lot of them started closing and the economic realities started hitting home in the traditional art world. I wonder how you see that energy in the digital space in contrast to the challenges in the traditional space right now.
Mimi Nguyen: When you said that, because, of course, I was quite gloomy before as well. But when you said that, I realized, yeah, that's great because, of course, we don't want this to happen to the galleries in our space, the galleries who started to open actually recently and have physical spaces, because this is basically we're facing the same issues.
But just learning about the fact that Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner are reporting like 90% decrease in their revenue, it just shows how, as you said, globally, this is a tricky moment for all galleries, not just our space.
But it uses space, and this sounds now like complete bullshit because I teach something like design thinking and speculative design in the art university. This is like a space that, what I normally tell students, this is disruptive innovation. Something has to change.
I hope that I'll be able to learn quickly and adapt quickly to these changes because something just is broken in the model. I think that just is reflected in all the closures, as you said.
We are a little bit lucky because we have slightly different cost structures than these galleries. The logistics that go behind a gallery is just very, very expensive. It's a lot of little things that come together. We are blessed with a slightly different system. But the more we pretend to be a traditional gallery, the closer we are to these challenges.
It's going to be very exciting. I spoke to a lot of contemporary galleries, the ones that are dealing with Asian paintings, for example. They are revising that, and it's quite exciting to see what's going to happen next year with them revising.
One of the galleries that I've been looking up to for years now, I've been following all of their booths in Art Basel and Frieze, it's BANK Shanghai, who actually represents Lu Yang. They closed their location in Shanghai. I mean, the gallery is called BANK Shanghai. They closed their location in Shanghai. They are sharing a location in New York with a different gallery. Maybe this is the model. What we understand so far is that the gallery should be in Chelsea on the ground floor with a building that costs one million a year to rent. Maybe that's something that will have to go because the reality is we're spending eight hours on the phone anyway. So what's the point?
So yeah, having this revision really helps. I think it's just going to... If we zoom out from a Machiavellian point of view, it's going to help us move forward. So yeah, it's horrible to hear about the closures. It is heartbreaking because it's a lot of art practices being now just left out there, are just being left without the galleries and the representing entities. But that means that there's going to be an open space for new experimentation to come. It will be quite exciting to see what's going to pan out.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it is sad. You hate to see it, but in some ways it might reflect resistance to change and then what the ramifications of that might be.
Well, yeah, thank you so much. This was a really interesting conversation. I wish we always could go on for longer, but yeah, I think this was great. Thank you so much.
Mimi Nguyen: Yeah. Thank you. Take care.
Peter Bauman: That's okay. Let's get in touch and good luck in Miami.
Mimi Nguyen: Okay. Bye.
Peter Bauman: Bye.
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