Art Asset Class

The From Lover to Buyer symposium at NY Art Week gathered artists, collectors, and people working across art, culture, and business to talk about what art is really worth. Not just its price, but its emotional pull, its cultural weight, and its place in how people build and think about wealth.

Grimanesa Amorós spoke in the session The Impact of Art: Space, Impact, and Strategy, in conversation with Art Asset Class founder Aza Benyatov. They discussed her large-scale light installations and how they reach beyond the artwork itself, activating public spaces, changing how people see them, and leaving a real emotional, cultural, and economic mark on the cities and institutions that host them. The conversation also looked at how her immersive work lives in several worlds at once, as art, as a public intervention, and as a cultural asset that sits where artistic vision meets architecture and investment.

See the guest speakers here.

(0:21) Thank you very much for your wonderful, kind introduction. And then I was thinking about the title, “Lover” and “Buyer”, and I think that love is a very important instrument.

(0:34) I wouldn’t be here as an artist if I wouldn’t have made it part of my practice, and I always said LPP: love, passion, and perseverance.

(0:42) Because I came to New York when I was 22 years old, and it has been a wonderful, beautiful ride with the romance with the unknown.

(0:56) I think that if I have to use a common denominator as to how I approach each project, is with a lot of research and development about especially the history of the place.

(1:18) The queen started with a lot of LPP, love passion, and perseverance. That’s really how I start. Like I mentioned before, I was 22 years old when I came to New York with my two little bags living the Hemingway dream, which is absolutely true.

(1:36) I want to do something that’s really very close to my heart, and I hope that the jury’s going to feel that. And it was, I want to make a Uros house in the middle of New York City. I want to also share my own cultural heritage, and I got the project. So, that was my first project in New York City.

(2:04) It was a collaboration with IC that was celebrating the 20th anniversary, and then also it was celebration of the 10th anniversary of our previous collaboration that I had with Peninsula Hotel. But I wanted to do something for the community of Istanbul.

(2:37) Thank you.