is a Los Angeles–based curatorial platform supporting future-oriented artistic practices across digital media, design, research, and sensory experimentation. Rip Space supports artists in exploring emergent cultural and technological paradigms with an emphasis on process, experimentation, and collective inquiry. Founded in 2024 by curator Vera Petukhova and Hacker / Artist John Threat, Rip Space operates as a site for critical inquiry through exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops, public discourse, and community gatherings. The platform prioritizes process, experimentation, and collaborative ideation over fixed outcomes, creating space for artistic research and works in development.
As a small, independently-run art space with a focused curatorial program, we don’t accept unsolicited exhibition proposals. For space use and other collaborations, feel free to fill out this form, we will try to do our best to respond ♥
Rip Space is a fiscally Sponsored project of 18th St Art Center - making your generous donations fully tax deductible.
team:
[ co-founder + curator ]
is an independent curator, from Minsk, Belarus currently based between Brooklyn and Los Angeles – focusing on performance, moving image and new media. Her curatorial interests include experimental practices, futurity, food, sensory and immersive experiences. She received her MA in Curatorial Practice from The School of Visual Art in 2017 and has worked with the curatorial teams at Visions2030, Performa , The Kitchen, Northwest Film Forum, Tribeca Film Festival. She has curated exhibitions for Earth Edition at CalArts, CA; Young Curators, New Ideas V: Detroit Art Week; AC Institute; CP Projects Space and SVA Gramercy Gallery. Her writing and curatorial projects have been published in the Art Newspaper, Blouin Artinfo, OnCurating Magazine, and Performa Magazine.
[ art + tech ]
Naomi Sam is a transmedia artist from Vienna and Hamburg, currently based in Los Angeles. She works across installation, sculpture, interactive media and video games, creating speculative spheres for collective imagining of posthuman futures, that explore relationships between bodies, environments, landscapes, nature, and technology in times of hypercapitalism. Alongside her artistic practice, she works on the spatial, technical, production, and fabrication aspects of exhibitions, public programs, and events. Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vienna, and Hamburg. She holds a BFA in Scenic Design from HFBK Hamburg and an MFA in Art and Technology from the California Institute of the Arts, where she is currently part time faculty teaching in the MFA Integrated Media specialization.
[ research + discourse
+ design ]
is a writer, web designer/developer, and experimental educator based in Los Angeles and, oftentimes, in Amsterdam. Her second book entitled Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinies was recently published by Set Margins. She codes to challenge the ideology of user-friendliness, support cultural platforms, respond to political gems, and socialize. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California.
