Art is never
the object alone.
Anne-Laure Lemaitre shapes places
where makers and viewers belong.
Disclosure is inherent to art. Through choice of subject, medium, and technique an artist puts themselves on display for all to see. In the same way, an art collection can be a window into its owners’ being: their interests, inclinations, motivations, and even beliefs. It speaks of a specific moment in history: the history of art, but also of cultural change, political events, and evolving identities. More than just a selection of purchased objects, it can be approached as a deeply intimate, archaeological exploration into a life: the person the collectors were when their collecting impulse began, and who they became as their passion unfolded.
Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall, known online by their moniker, The Icy Gays or @theicygays, acquired their first artwork, Corydon Cowansage’s Stairs #3, seven years ago after discovering it online. To call this purchase life-changing would be an understatement. Becoming “art collectors” was never a goal for the couple, but this painting, with its surreal abstraction of nature, became the point of origin for their committed discovery and support of emerging queer and female artists which would ultimately grow into a landmark collection.
Throughout the ensuing years, Rob and Eric collected with their hearts, bringing home works chosen for their vibrancy, evocative power, and technical prowess. Their collection developed, not as a calculated investment plan, but as a way to joyfully champion narratives that playfully subvert a conventional understanding of life, beauty, and intimacy. Certain selections may feel challenging to some, but to others these works conjure familiar feelings and shared experiences. By disclosing what can be uncomfortable or provocative realities, these pieces seek to initiate empathetic conversation only possible through the language of art. The works become spaces in which the artists are free to create a world in their own image, free of conventions, rules, and filters. They inherently celebrate the ability art has to transfigure anew, exposing hidden layers of being and voicing essential perspectives from our shared human experience.
FULL DISCLOSURE is the first presentation from this very special collection to be publicly displayed. In a way, Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall, inspired by the artists they so profoundly admire, have chosen to invite everyone into their world. Into their garden, where nature and humanity surreally entwine. Into their home, where bodies lay unbothered at rest. Into their dreams, where boundless expansions and surreal realities create new conceptions of beauty and self. In these spaces, one can decipher, if ever so slightly, these two beloved figures of the contemporary art scene all while discovering incredible artists leaving their mark on history.
Photo: Alexander Laurent Rubalcava
Anne-Laure Lemaitre is a curator, writer, and producer based in New York, Paris, and the Nova Scotia wilderness. Her practice begins by questioning a territory: its physical and emotional dimensions, its history, its context, its belonging, before turning to the art it calls for. This orientation has shaped a body of work spanning the most experimental corners of the emerging art world and leading corporations and public institutions.
Many artists she has worked with early in their careers have since gone on to significant critical and market recognition. Those relationships rarely end with the exhibition. For several, she remains a resource: someone to think with, exchange with, workshop with.
For nearly twenty years, she has worked across scales and contexts: from intimate solo exhibitions at artist-run spaces to permanent public commissions, from single-artist career conversations to cultural programs spanning five continents. Her practice is built around the specific rather than the repeatable, treating the space, the institution, the sidewalk, and the online environment each as curatorial material in its own right.
Lemaitre writes regularly about art for catalogues, publications, and for herself. Her writing, whether commissioned or not, tends toward the felt rather than the prescribed: a belief that how we speak about a practice, and what it does to us, shapes how it is seen and received.
Intentional art programs · Site-specific commissions
Curatorial strategy · International practice
Art In Context is a curatorial production practice whose work ranges from international public commissions, corporate collections and multi-venue cultural strategies to ongoing collaborations with artists, brands and cultural institutions.
Every project begins with the same questions: what does this place need, what story belongs here, and who should tell it. That orientation shapes everything from artist selection and fabrication to the logic of how a program holds together in one location or across multiple sites.
Drawing on nearly twenty years of work, Art In Context has built the infrastructure to operate anywhere and at any scale. An extensive network of creative partners allows it to move from a single commission to a coordinated program spanning dozens of sites without losing the specificity that makes a project land. Art In Context works worldwide.