DREAMS WITHOUT BORDERS II

 

Visi Almagro

Visi Almagro is a Spanish visual artist, painter and illustrator. Her work explores identity and emotional resilience in the context of a digitally mediated world.

She focuses on portraiture with a strong psychological dimension. Each work begins as a detailed digital composition, which then evolves into a vivid acrylic painting. The character's gaze, along with colour, texture and contrast, plays a fundamental role in evoking human resilience. Through this two-stage process, first digital and then physical on canvas or paper, Almagro invites viewers to reflect on the authenticity of human existence and to embrace their imperfections. Her work suggests that we all possess an innate strength, rebelliousness and resilience that transcend a performative digital life dependent on the approval of others. Ultimately, it expresses a profound love for the human condition.

Drawing inspiration from Pop Art, Surrealism and the Superflat movement, her work blends introspection, equilibrium and material transformation to reveal the silent strength that underlies vulnerability. Trained in communication and advertising, Almagro has felt a strong connection with artistic creation since childhood.

Her work has been exhibited in several Spanish cities, including Madrid, Cádiz, Barcelona and Santiago, at venues such as MEAM (European Museum of Modern Art) in Barcelona, as well as at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (TIAC). In 2026, she was named one of Arts to Hearts Project's 100 Emerging Artists and received its International Artist Award.

 

​​

Paula Borsetti

 ​ 

Paula Borsetti is a New England abstract painter working between studios in Beverly, Massachusetts and Sebago, Maine. Her layered paintings explore memory, place, intuition and transformation. Working in acrylic on canvas, she builds, covers, sands, scrapes and excavates each surface over time, letting figures, gardens, birds and coastlines surface and dissolve in fields of luminous pink, coral and gold. Her process treats the painting as an equal partner: she follows where it leads rather than imposing a plan. At its heart, her practice is about discovery, material exploration and the human need for connection.

 

After nearly three decades as an art educator, Borsetti moved to a full-time studio practice in 2020. She taught at Beverly High School from 1994 to 2020 and was adjunct faculty at Endicott College and Montserrat College of Art. She holds an M.E. in Arts and Learning from Endicott College, a BFA in Painting from Montserrat College of Art and a Certificate of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston, and is an alumna of the Creative Visionary Program. Recent solo exhibitions include Come With Me at the North Shore Arts Association (2025) and Wayfinding at Stetson Gallery, Marblehead (2024). She has shown in group exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, the Salmagundi Club in New York and SCOPE Miami. In October 2026, she will exhibit in London at D Contemporary as part of Dreams Without Borders II. Her honours include being a finalist for the Women United Art Prize 2025, the Brookline Bank Award for Excellence in Any Media at the NSAA Regional Juried Show (2025) and an Arts to Hearts Project International Artist Award (2026). Her work has been featured in Create! Magazine and Sfumato Art Magazine.

 

Borsetti is a Signature Member of the National Association of Women Artists and serves as Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Rocky Neck Art Colony. She is represented by Galaray House Gallery, Boston, and The Salted Cod Arthouse, Gloucester. Her work is held in private collections throughout the United States and abroad.

 ​

 

Yoav Brener

 

Yoav Brener (b. 1986) is an Israeli painter based in Tel Aviv. He works mainly in large-scale abstract painting, exploring the relationship between nature and abstraction. His canvases combine emotional depth with intuitive gesture and an attention to the unseen forces that shape human experience.Brener's visual language is built on colour, layered surfaces and a sense of accumulated memory, both personal and collective. He draws inspiration from Georgia O'Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler and Sam Francis, painters who each found ways to turn landscape, colour and feeling into pure form. For Brener, painting is also an act of observation turned inward: a way of looking at the world by first looking closely at oneself.

 ​

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, Europe and Asia. It is held in private and institutional collections internationally, including that of collector Aby Rosen.

 ​

Anese Cho

  

Anese Cho is a Korean-born sculptor and installation artist based in Dallas, Texas. She works across sculpture, painting, woodworking, metal, resin and light, creating immersive environments that explore healing, refuge, identity and transformation. Her practice is rooted in emotional memory and the invisible forces that shape inner life, and she aims to turn feeling into form and light into something that can hold human experience.

 ​ 

Born in Seoul with Mongolian roots, Anese studied at Ewha Womans University and Pratt Institute. She was guided by her late teacher, Armand Dimele, and her mentor, Robert Glaisek. She describes her path to art as one of detours, loss and renewal, anchored in a belief that everyone is born an artist and in her own childhood compulsion to draw on paper, in dirt, and with sticks and stones.

 

She develops her work through ongoing series. Fragmentation considers invisible labour and undervalued feminine energy. The Second Floor rebuilds a forgotten childhood space that became a refuge for imagination and survival. Random Celebration embraces fleeting, spontaneous joy. Her best-known series, Lighthouse, reduces a house to an illuminated outline, creating a sanctuary for reflection and emotional safety, especially for those who grew up without a secure home.

​ 

Lighthouse is permanently installed at Marfa Sculpture Park in Texas and at the SWCAC Museum in Shenzhen, China. It has also appeared in night-time public programmes in Dallas and Frisco. Earlier, Fragmentation was shown in solo exhibitions in Crete, at the Teloglion Foundation of Art in Thessaloniki and at Laboratorium Venezia in Venice. Anese has also exhibited in Germany and South Korea, as well as at SCOPE Miami and the LA Art Show. Her recent projects include Glowing Path at Maintenant Gallery in Marfa, The Second Floor at 400H Gallery in Fort Worth and Soft Power at D Contemporary in London. She has been featured in Create! Magazine and VoyageLA.

​ 

Maria Cohen

​ 

Maria Cohen (b. 1989) is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist based in London. Working across painting, installation, animation, performance and curatorial research, she explores intimacy, identity and embodied vulnerability: the psychic and social struggle over the female body, and the ways art can hold, and help heal, emotional experience. Her recent oil paintings, Dealing With A Broken Heart (2025), turn gestural fields of red into half-formed, dissolving bodies, where drips and layered marks carry the weight of feeling.

 ​ 

Cohen holds an MA in Fine Art Painting from Camberwell College of Arts (2021), which she attended on a UAL International Postgraduate Scholarship. She also holds a Master of Fine Art from the V. Surikov State Academy Art Institute in Moscow, where she received an Honorable Mention from the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts, and has studied the history and philosophy of art at ICA Moscow.

 ​

Her work has been exhibited internationally. Highlights include a solo presentation, Zero Gravity, at Voskhod Gallery in Basel; the 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art; and London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery. In 2026, her project Fractured Self was presented as part of the Tellus Triennial in London. She is also co-creator of I Always See Stars Above My Head, a participatory performance project bringing together live music, dance and digital installation. Cohen has held residencies in London, Tel Aviv and Kyrgyzstan and, most recently, at the Ria Keburia Foundation. Her work has been featured in Made In Bed magazine and is held in private collections internationally.

 ​ 

Joan Maureen Collins

 ​ 

Joan Maureen Collins is an American expressive abstract painter based in Scottsdale, Arizona, whose practice has developed over nearly three decades. She studied at Scottsdale Community College and Scottsdale Artists' School and is an alumna of the Creative Visionary Program. Movement shapes Collins' practice: movement through landscapes, cultures and memory. Abstraction is her language, but nature remains her source. Sea cliffs, desert winds, monsoon markets and dusty cities leave impressions that later surface in the studio. Her process is physical and intuitive, often incorporating unconventional tools and materials gathered from the landscape, including feathers, palm fronds, cactus spines, seaweed, earth and water.

 ​ 

Her series Entangled Beauty included canvases submerged directly in the Celtic Sea, allowing tide and water to become part of the making. Her ongoing series Water Cuts Through explores erosion, renewal and the persistent ways water reshapes the land, with works begun on the desert floor using graphite, water and natural findings before returning to the studio. Collins' work has been exhibited internationally, including a two-person show in Ireland with Majella O'Neill Collins, SCOPE Miami, exhibitions in New York and the inaugural Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week. She has been recognised as a Phoenix Art Museum Artist Spotlight artist and featured in numerous publications. Her work is represented by Globe Fine Art in Santa Fe, with representation extending internationally.

 

​Samantha Davies

 ​ 

Samantha Davies works with silk as a sculptural medium, shaping form through movement, repetition and intuitive response. Her practice explores the tension between structure and fluidity, where stillness and motion exist simultaneously within form. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in New York, and within design-led environments and curated exhibitions such as FLUX Exhibition. She collaborates with interior designers and private collectors, creating bespoke works that respond to the atmosphere and spatial presence of a space. Working from her studio in East Sussex, Davies continues to develop large-scale sculptural works alongside intimate collector pieces and photographic studies drawn from water and natural elements.

 

Lee Ghilain

 

Lee Ghilain is a contemporary abstract artist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Raised along the Texas Gulf Coast, she now works from her studio in Bayview, Texas. Ghilain has maintained an art practice for decades, exhibiting throughout Texas and beyond. Eight of her works are held in the permanent collection of the Cherokee Nation, and her work has been selected for the Trail of Tears Art Show. In 2026, she was named a finalist in Arts to Hearts Project's 100 Emerging Artists and was selected for its International Artist Award. Her work has also been featured in VoyageMIA and The Great Book of Art Makers. In October 2026, Ghilain will exhibit in London at D Contemporary as part of Dreams Without Borders II, curated by Sonia Borrell and presented with Studio To Gallery. 

 

Ana Sneeringer​

 

Ana Sneeringer is a Slovenian-American figurative painter based in Montgomery, Alabama. She works mainly in oil on linen. Her paintings centre on women and explore identity, belonging, vulnerability, and the quiet moment when a person begins to trust her own perception rather than seeking answers outside herself. 

 

Sneeringer's route to painting was unconventional. Before turning to art, she worked in documentary journalism and directed an environmental television station in Slovenia. A life spent across Jordan, France, Russia, the Netherlands, India, the Dominican Republic and the United States gave her a lasting fascination with how place, culture and personal history shape who we become. She began painting while living in the Dominican Republic and is self-taught. That independence shows in her intuitive process: her compositions are rarely planned in advance. Figures, objects and colour emerge through the act of painting itself, often touched by the surreal and left open-ended so viewers can bring their own stories to the work. Since 2019, Sneeringer has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, including in the United Kingdom, Canada, India, South Korea, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. She has held solo exhibitions in Montgomery, Dubai, Lugano and Hyderabad. Recent group presentations include Visionary Projects in New York, M2 Gallery in Little Rock, the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art in Colorado and East Atelier Gallery in Seoul. She was a VIP Artist at Urban Art Fair in 2025.

 

Her work is held in the collection of the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, one of India's National Museums, and at Disini Art Resort in Lombok, Indonesia. It has been featured in Beautiful Bizarre and Harper's Bazaar Interiors. In 2026, Sneeringer undertook a residency with Jen Tough Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in October 2026 she exhibits with D Contemporary in London.

 

Nicole Tijoux

 

Nicole Tijoux is a Chilean visual artist whose work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, and North and South America. Recent solo exhibitions include Motion Sickness (Madrid, 2024), Corrientes que perdieron su cauce (Santiago, 2023), APNEA (Santiago, 2019), FUGA (Santiago, 2015) and Pool (Paris, 2005). Her work has been featured at Art Miami, CONTEXT Art Miami and multiple editions of the Affordable Art Fair in London, Hamburg, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York, as well as in exhibitions at MAVI Museum in Santiago and The Curators Gallery in Paris.