NANA
A WORD PEOPLE USE
WHEN THEY DON'T EXPECT AUTHORITY.
WE KEPT THE NAME.
In French, nana is the everyday word for "girl", casual, colloquial, the kind you'd use talking about someone at a bar, not the kind you'd expect to carry any authority. Nana is a deliberately underestimated word, the kind used about someone before anyone has decided to take her seriously. That's exactly why we kept it.
The agency exists to do the same thing for artists: take what the traditional art world underestimates, and turn it into authority before the market fully understands what it's looking at.
Photographer: Sylvie Castioni
ANNELISE STERN
FOUNDER NANA / PARIS & EUROPE
My job is simple: I bet, before anyone else, on which artists will matter. I started at 18 with an association putting artists under 25 in front of an audience. I've since run a gallery out of rented atypical places, built the first statistics on how few women actually show in French galleries, co-founded a collective that has exhibited over a hundred women artists worldwide, and watched the classic gallery model quietly stop working. 9 years of practice led to one idea I now call the betweenness curatorial: the artists worth betting on are the ones standing at the intersection of art, of public culture, of the brands and collectors who haven't caught on yet.
I SAW IT BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE.
MY EXPERIENCE
New Art Generation
Founded at 18, an association putting artists under 25 in front of a public, with events drawing crowds up to a thousand.
My Little Paintings
Co-founded to make collecting accessible to a younger generation. Left after a year to play the contemporary art game on her own terms.
ART GIRLS
A gallery with no fixed address: exhibitions staged in fairs and atypical places in Europe..
Gxrls Revolution
Co-founded a collective that has since exhibited over a hundred women artists worldwide. Began collecting around the female gaze.
Marianne(s)
A documentary photography project that became the turning point: proof that the classic gallery model was dead, and that an artist now has to live at the intersection of art and culture.
Nana
Founded in the middle of closing her previous gallery — built on nine years of practice and the betweenness curatorial as its theoretical core.
WE DON'T WAIT FOR CONSENSUS.
WE BUILD THE CASE BEFORE IT EXISTS.
01
ARTIST
STRATEGY
Positioning, production and representation for a small, deliberately chosen roster, plus strategic support for artists building it alone.
02
EUROPEAN POSITIONING
Based in Paris, working across the wider European circuit, where the audience, the press and the market rarely align on time.
03
PRODUCTION & PARTNERSHIPS
Full production from concept to opening night, and partnerships with collectors, institutions and brands who want in before it's obvious.