SAMANTHA OZER
interview & photography —
ALEX ARIAS,
TONO fest ‘25, anahuacali, mexico city
portraits —
KEEGAN KEENE,
paris
— february, 2026
ALEX ARIAS,
TONO fest ‘25, anahuacali, mexico city
portraits —
KEEGAN KEENE,
paris
— february, 2026
SAMANTHA OZER — I grew up in New York, and I studied art history at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In some ways, the path to TONO was very direct; in others, not. One of my first internships was with the National Portrait Gallery in Scotland. I worked with the senior curator of international photography – they have an incredible collection, some of the first photographs ever taken. And then my first job was a fellowship at MoMA, followed by a curatorial assistant role at MoMA PS1 in New York.
AA — Oh, wow. What did you work on at MoMA?
SO — At MoMA, I worked with Paola Antonelli. In addition to working as a Senior Curator for Architecture & Design, she runs a think tank called The R&D Salons, where she brings artists and designers into conversation with people outside the art world. By now, this has become more common for museums to expand to other types of thinkers, intellectuals, and creative people. It wasn’t the norm in 2012 (when she founded it, and before my time there), especially for an institution as storied and influential as MoMA. These were hundred-something person, invite-only salons. Topics I worked on included dependence, for which we brought Nan Goldin to speak. It was one of her first public talks after founding P.A.I.N., her organization that fights against the opioid crisis.
SO — We did salons on, for example, the white male, on dogs, on angels, on hair – topics that were either more overtly political or were maybe more overtly designed, but interesting in the ways that they overlapped. While I always knew I wanted to work in art, I thought that Paola was really fabulous and brilliant and someone I could learn a lot from, so I wanted to work with her on these programs.
Later, Peter Eleey invited me to start working at PS1, which was kind of crazy, as I had always dreamed of working there. While working at MoMA, I would schedule meetings with PS1 to explore potential R&D collaborations. I hoped some form of collaboration could happen, but the main purpose of these meetings was to introduce myself to the team there. Later, a curatorial associate was leaving, and they needed someone to help them finish preparing this exhibition on the US intervention in the Gulf region. I got a call from Peter Eleey on a Wednesday, the associate left on Friday, and I started on something like Monday.
AA — And how did your move to Mexico happen?
SO — While I was at MoMA, I started visiting Mexico City during Maco and met many people in the art scene. Years later, I was living in London, but in New York at the time, and wasn’t sure about going back. Some friends in Mexico City said, "Why don't you come and stay for a bit?”
AA — Nice. So that's 2021: you're getting your footing in Mexico, meeting people.
SO Yes. And I continued to meet artists and other curators and began exploring other collaborations. I organized a screening program at Nordenhake and then worked on a performance series at Ex Teresa Arte Actual. I had to go back to London but I returned some months later to continue researching.
AA — I'm wondering how TONO was sparked after spending more time in Mexico. Did you see a need for this space that you were trying to create?
SO — The idea came from a few things. I’ve noticed that when traveling to see exhibitions and other events, there's so much institutional interest in time-based work, as well as from critics and at major biennials. But in the gallery system, there are not really the right levels of support. There was this interesting gap that I still see today.
SO — I learned about the history of festivals held in some museums; for example, Ex Teresa Arte Actual had a sound festival. Through conversations with people in Mexico City, I began to imagine a project dedicated entirely to time-based work that could create a network across many of these institutions. To create a dialogue about this work across the city. The process started quite casually: I reached out to venues I knew and then cold-emailed those I would dream of working with, such as the Museo de Arte Moderno. Once we got the ball rolling, it happened quite quickly. The first edition was planned in nine months.
AA — Wow. Quick turnaround. Is the theme of time-based art something that's central as a passion, or is it an area that you saw didn't have enough voice or funding around?
SO — I think a bit of both. I think time-based art encapsulates some of the most compelling and exciting things being made today, so it’s just naturally come into focus for me. There are ways it intersects with entirely visual arts, though. Luiz Roque is a great example. He makes amazing films but is also now producing beautiful ceramics, and spent many months in Guadalajara at a ceramic studio during a residency. He had a major show at Laboratorio Arte Alameda as part of TONO last year.
Also, WangShui, with whom I worked on their installation in the Arsenale for the last Venice Biennale, and co-commissioned with Adriano Pedrosa’s Biennale team, the second chapter of an opera that Shui created the set for during TOO 2023. In Venice, Shui’s paintings and LED nets became the backdrop for a live performance they directed with Alberto Buastamante, starring La Bruja de Texoco, Little Owl, Debit, and LAO.
SO — How I most quickly define time-based work, and what I also enjoy about it, is that these are types of works that the artist has determined how much time you should spend with it. Painting, sculpture, photography–these all deal with time, too–but you can see a sculpture, and you don't know if you should stay in the room for 20 minutes or four hours or three seconds as you walk past.
If it's a video work with a label or a performance, or if it's a piece of music or sound installation–some things are infinite loops–but you’re given the framework in which you're supposed to understand and give it room: you’re told, for example, this is twelve minutes, or an hour, or this is a party that lasts six hours. The artist's power over how you spend time with the work is something I'm really interested in.
AA — I must say, going to TONO this past year and seeing the Bárbara Sanchez-Kane piece as well as the Eartheater performance – that was amazing, seeing those set at different times of day, with people coming in and out at certain points. It was very cool to see that. And I was wondering how you worked with those artists to choose locations, or whether you had those spaces ready to use?
SO — It's a mix. At this point, there are a few institutions I’ve worked with every year and others that have been one-offs, or maybe we did a project in the first year, then took a pause, then came back. We've worked with over fifteen institutions since 2023. It's a little bit of a Tetris game to organize the project's scale, the space the institution can offer, and the format. For example, with Eartheater, when I was considering her aesthetic and vocal range, I thought that Ex Teresa Arte Actual, which used to be a church, would be acoustically very special.
We hosted Joshua Serafin's beautiful performance "Void" in Chapultepec Park, in front of the Cárcamo de Dolores Museum. I thought of putting their piece, which was about a futuristic Filipino deity, in front of a Diego Rivera mosaic made of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of water, in front of this museum that used to be the water purification plant for the city. So I pitched the site's specificity. There are other people I'd love to work with there, but doing something outside is quite specific. It always depends. It's a bit of play.
AA — TONO festival was across Mexico City and Puebla. I was wondering how this difference in location influences the reception of the people who come, and how that also worked across different locations.
SO — I see them as both connected and separate audiences. Puebla is one of the biggest cities in Mexico. It has its own strong local audience and an audience of tourists who travel across Mexico. Saodat Ismailova’s exhibition, part of the TONO project in Puebla last year, drew 30,000 visitors, which is amazing. As the current director used to work at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, there are still strong connections between the TONO venues in the capital and the Museo Amparo.
Because most museums in Mexico City are closed on Monday, but Puebla is open, I always organize buses for anyone from the public who wants to go for free. And because the museum there has a very specific collection– pre-Columbian, Spanish colonial, and contemporary art– I try to bring artists that have a specific relationship with that history. In addition to Saodat, we’ve worked with Ali Cherri, and this year will present an installation by Ho Tzu Nyen.
AA — How do you go about scouting these locations for future contexts?
SO — I'm really happy with the long-term collaborations I have. Now it's less of an issue with scouting, unless an artist wants to do something specific that doesn't make sense at one of our locations. By now, it's more about figuring out what an artist might need and whether we already have it. That being said, we are working with a few new venues this year! Such as Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, both museums which were homes and/or studios to historic Mexican artists.
SO — Travel informs the work in terms of seeing exhibitions, whether it's museums, galleries, or alternative or public spaces, and whatever else artists are doing in different cities. And TONO is a mix of new commissions and existing projects. It's been nice to live in these different places and bring different works in between.
I also have a community, whether it's friends who work in fashion or in design or in architecture, who are spending time in these cities as well. I find it interesting to share stories with them.
AA — What do you see for the future of TONO?
SO — To keep doing what we're doing and continue to grow in the scale of what we can present The vision from the beginning was to found it as a US-based nonprofit with a global intent. It’s exciting because I think it's now clearer to everyone outside of the project what the vision is. The idea is that the festival is just one piece of what we do; we also have activities throughout the year. So there's the festival, and there's the commissions part, where TONO is commissioning artists directly, and there is curation within other institutions.
In the fall, we organized an incredible concert in Paris with Mabe Fratti, who's a cello player based in Mexico City, and Lucy Railton, who's a British cello player based in Berlin and spending a lot of time in Mexico. I did a mini concert with them in Mexico, and then presented it on a much larger scale in Paris. At the beginning of this year, I closed a project with Camille Henrot, an incredible French artist, which I organized with Sophie de Mello Franco at Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro in São Paulo – a dream! - but you see the point, I love an interesting space – a church, a modernist home, a museum asa former church or temple!
In April, “Aguas Frescas,” a co-commission between TONO and Mudam Luxembourg, will travel to Performance Space in New York. Everything really continues to evolve.
SO — So, it’s going to be slightly longer this year! 2.5 weeks so we can open with a performance by Tino Seghal. This will take place across Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo from March 6-10th, so save the date! There will be other live programming by Space Afrika, Franziska Aigner and Kelman Duran, and Kianí del Valle. There will be a TONO-organized exhibition by Ho Tzu Nyen and a special project by Mexican artist Avantgardo. We are working with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer on a live program on the occasion of his retrospective at Museo de Arte Moderno, as well as an event with Melanie Smith on the occasion of "Melanie Smith: Un tiempo de libertad en que el mundo había sido posible" at Museo Jumex.
Part of our mission is to collaborate with international institutions, and I’m thrilled that this will have a strong focus on dance and cinema. We are working with 99 Canal (New York) to tour Alexa West's "Jawbreaker" and with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels to bring Alessandro Sciarroni and his company to Mexico City. We are also planning a special evening with Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and have invited Kunsthalle Bangkok's moving-image curator, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, to curate a selection of works by Thai filmmakers and video artists. So, lots to see! There will be an event or project every day from March 6th to 22nd!