Independent is pleased to announce further details of the artists and galleries participating in the fair’s 16th edition this May. Taking place from May 8–11 at Spring Studios in Tribeca, New York, the 2025 fair will feature exhibitions by over 118 artists presented by 82 international galleries and nonprofit organizations, curated by Independent’s founder Elizabeth Dee, founding curatorial advisor Matthew Higgs, with Berlin-based advisors Alexandra Alexopoulou and David Ulrichs. 

An invitation-only fair, Independent’s mission since its inception in 2010 has been to inspire encounters with extraordinary contemporary art for discerning collectors and institutions. Building on the fair’s history of launching artists to a new level of recognition, a new curatorial initiative titled Independent Debuts provides a dedicated platform for solo exhibitions of emerging talent in New York. This year, Independent Debuts will spotlight 25 artists. 

Over the past two decades, Independent’s gallery network has brought together the most creative and inspired programs of emerging, mid-career, and established artists from around the world. The 2025 fair will feature diverse aspects of more established artists through several significant solo presentations which have been especially conceived for Independent. A number of exhibitions will address timely socio-political themes such as the climate crisis and Indigenous identity, while others grapple with the enduring role of humor in art.

Indigenous Identity: 

Tureen features sculptural and textile-based works by Anchorage-based artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs ​​(Iñupiaq and Athabascan) that integrate traditional and synthetic materials, from walrus gut to acrylic gel polymer, porcupine quill to nylon thread. Her materials serve as the foundation for surfaces and forms that recall post-minimalists like Eva Hesse while revealing the beauty and injustice experienced by her people and homelands. Diane Rosenstein Gallery presents abstract ledger drawings by Santa Fe-based artist Terran Last Gun (Piikani), whose bold explorations of color and form often reference Blackfoot painted lodges, which he considers “visual masterpieces of the Great Plains.” Last Gun has been commissioned for the upcoming SITE SANTA FE International Biennial, Once Within A Time (June 2025–January 2026).

Humor:

Humor emerges as a material in its own right through Guy Richards Smit’s incisive gag-cartoons, published by The New Yorker since 2022. Ahead of a forthcoming anthology from Hunter’s Point Press, A Hug From The Art World celebrates Smit’s larger works on canvas, which traverse themes of narcissism, desire, power, and failure. Matt Kenny employs humor and banality in equal measure to explore the intersection of poetry and politics through various tropes: New Jersey wastelands, faithful oil reproductions of masters such as Courbet and Goya, and New York cityscapes inhabited by the World Trade Tower as a cartoon monster. F presents Kenny’s new body of work, which takes on the eyes as windows of the mind, plumbing the depths of his overactive imagination. Adam Higgins’s all-over aerial compositions, on show with Chris Sharp Gallery, depict salads dressed with raw proteins to dazzling and perplexing effect. With photorealistic skill and deadpan humor, Higgins evokes the conventions of Dutch still-lifes, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, and contemporary food photography. This presentation will also be part of Independent Debuts.