Storm Ascher is taking the art world by, well…Storm. She’s a writer, curator, gallery owner, artist, and all-around art-world disruptor—but try pinning her down, and good luck. As the founder of Superposition, a nomadic art gallery, she’s built a career on existing in between spaces: between cities, disciplines, and the usual art-world rulebook (which she’d rather rewrite than follow).
Right now, though, she’s taking our call from her studio / office / apartment / gallery space in New York City. Please enjoy while I catch up with Storm to talk about art as a form of protest, the gentrification Olympics, Hello Kitty beanies, and why she’ll probably show up to her next gala in a wearable sleeping bag.
Gwyneth Giller: So, where are you now?
Storm Ascher: I’m in my office/studio, which is my live-work space on the Eastside.
GG: How long have you been there?
SA: I moved in January of last year, so it’s still pretty new to me.
GG: A new space always invites fresh inspiration and ideas.
SA: Yeah, totally. It’s the first time I’m living alone and have my own studio—my own space that I can truly call Superposition and Hamptons Black Arts Council headquarters.
GG: That’s amazing.
SA: And I get to hang up my work and all the art I’ve been collecting over the years. Before, I was living with other people, so I never really had the chance. Now, it’s my space.
GG: You can do whatever the hell you want.
SA: Exactly. It’s funny because before, I was constantly moving into places that had no character—at least not anything that reflected me. Now, everything in here is all me, and I’m like, wow, okay… a lot has happened.
GG: If your home office walls could talk, what do you think they’d say?
SA: Well, one of them literally says, When Do We Start Rioting?—it’s an artwork by Sam Durant that’s on my window sill overlooking the streets of New York.
GG: We love Sam Durant.
SA: Yeah, it’s this bright, well-lit piece with vibrant blue colors, surrounded by other celebratory things in my home. But the phrase, When Do We Start Rioting?—it always hits me. And it’s kind of funny because this is my second time living in New York after Trump just became president again.
GG: Oh god…
SA: Yeah, so I’m always balancing that feeling of excitement—hustling, growing my business—and then also questioning, What is happening in the world? And how is the art world constantly circumventing this chaos?
GG: Yeah, it’s wild. You don’t really get a chance to exist outside of either reality (or nightmare)—the art world being cutthroat or the real world literally being up in flames.
SA: Exactly.
GG: So what’s one anxiety hack you have?
SA: Hot yoga.
GG: Yes.
SA: I got into hot yoga over ten years ago, and it has grounded me across every industry I’ve worked in. No one can reach you in that space, and you’re sweating too much to even think about picking up your phone.
GG: [laughs] Sorry, I’m too sweaty to answer your call please leave a message after the tone. What’s your morning routine like?
SA: My morning routine is basically me trying not to check emails. I’m a night owl, so I get most of my work done late at night, and it’s nice because I can do online visits with my LA artists, like Alex Anderson and Haleigh Nickerson.
GG: That’s convenient, I’m also not a morning person.
SA: I always do a full clean of my studio and kitchen in the morning, just in case.
GG: In case?
SA: Since my home is also my office, I never know what the day will bring. A client might drop by to see something, or a shipper could come to deliver artwork. I need to be ready.
GG: Right, that’s a lot of pressure! So Superposition Gallery is a nomadic art gallery—neither here nor there, popping up in borrowed spaces. If it were to have a home-base, would it be your literal home?
SA: My space here is more of a respite—a headquarters. It’s where I am right now while I’m doing the work I need to do for New York artists.
GG: That makes sense.
SA: It’s not like a Tribeca loft that’s being built into something commercial. If your goal isn’t to have a brick-and-mortar gallery, then I think the best option is to go more and more inward. The goal is always to minimize the footprint.
GG: So when did you first conceive of this idea?
SA: When I was studying abroad in Barcelona, I took a class called Branding Barcelona. I thought it was going to be about digital marketing or city branding—like, “Oh, this will help me learn how to market on Instagram” or whatever. But it was actually about how they branded an entire city to the rest of the world—how they gentrified the shit out of it.
GG: Whoa.
SA: During the 1992 Olympics, the whole idea was to put Barcelona on the world stage. They retrofitted everything in small shantytown neighborhoods, commissioned massive public artworks, and saw big galleries and art fairs pop up—all in line with the Olympics. So I started asking: Who is this actually for? Are you beautifying the city for the people who live there? Or are you developing it to attract luxury and new people?
GG: I fear that it’s the ladder.
SA: Yeah, and I hadn’t even considered it a problem before. I moved around so much growing up that my sense of home and place wasn’t something I thought about. Home was wherever I happened to be. I moved so much out of necessity, not because I had the luxury of popping around.
So when I entered the gallery world, I wanted to see if I could avoid contributing to gentrification. But it became clear that working in these established galleries meant participating in it by default. And I respect those institutions—I’ve studied them, I know amazing people who work there. But even they didn’t enter the market intending to contribute to displacement. It just happens.
GG: That’s a great point.
SA: It’s not that I’m against other models, but I don’t want to add to the problem. If people are confused by the idea that I can sell art and have a strong program without a real estate conversation, well—why shouldn’t we complicate things and push for change?
GG: I love that. It breathes new life into how we can exist in the art world.
SA: Exactly.
GG: What’s another pop culture event that has deeply impacted you—whether in your writing, your artistic practice, or your perspective?
SA: One of the biggest things for me has been the transition from analog to internet culture. Being born in ‘94, I watched that shift happen in real time. It also ties into why physics is such a big part of how I understand things. Superposition—the gallery name—comes from a quantum mechanics concept.
GG: Women in STEM. Walk me through it.
SA: I had this amazing teacher, Mr. Ahad, in high school. He was from Burma, and he had these intense writings in Burmese that he’d paraphrase for us. He was also trying to prove the metaphysicality of spirits—basically, to scientifically validate the existence of ghosts. It was fascinating because it tied physics and spirituality together.
One day, he explained superposition to us: a particle splits and vibrates, and when light shines on it, it only hits at certain intervals. So, when it’s being observed, it exists. When it’s not being observed, it doesn’t exist.
GG: That’s so poetic.
SA: The idea is that the show is on when the show is on. When we have an exhibition, we are a gallery. When we don’t, the ideas still exist, the community is still there, but it’s not visible. It’s both a question and an answer—it’s everything and nothing at the same time.
GG: This ties into the various hats you wear in your day-to-day life. Let’s play a game: outline the different roles you play and what literal hats represent them.
SA: Love this. Okay, artist hat: a Hello Kitty beanie. Because when I was painting a lot, I always wore a beanie—especially when I was growing out my hair after shaving one side of my head.
GG: Sooooo Britney.
SA: Curator hat: something decorative, like a feather or a brooch.
GG: Elegant.
SA: Teaching hat—since I just started teaching at SVA—that would be a big sweatshirt hoodie. Studio mode, full immersion.
GG: Perfect.
SA: And for performing arts: I’d say an art fair baseball cap—like a Frieze hat. Something collected along the way that I could also choreograph a hip-hop piece in.
GG: Who’s your favorite performance artist?
SA: Carolee Schneemann. I love how she used her body—the rawness, the femininity, the physicality of her work. And then outside of art, Megan Thee Stallion’s recent documentary? Obsessed.
GG: I love Schneemann’s Interior Scroll. I need to see Megan Thee Stallion’s documentary ASAP.
SA: You need to. I love that these documentaries are coming out earlier in an artist’s career, rather than just tragic after-the-fact retrospectives.
GG: Totally. Do you think living itself can be performance art?
SA: Yes. Especially when people expect you to perform for them—whether it’s code-switching, identity politics, or just existing in a way people project onto you. It’s like being asked to wear a hundred different hats all at once.
GG: You’ve mentioned feeling like you’re constantly performing dances in your head that you never actually performed. Can you elaborate on that?
SA: Yes, and recently, I started painting again, and I realized that the images I use in my paintings are often inspired by choreography from over ten years ago. But the images themselves are from the present, so it’s like these two timelines are merging.
GG: You also mentioned that there’s an element of performance in how you navigate the world?
SA: Yeah, I think part of that choreography is tied to this feeling of not knowing how people will react to me or what they expect from me, especially as someone who’s multiracial. If there were to be a dance on stage, like the one you mentioned, a huge part of it would just be me trying to make sure everyone knows I’m not a threat. And I don’t even know why I feel that way—it just feels unsettling being observed as one static idea, I have to move around to feel like myself.
GG: It’s like your presence itself is a performance that people are interpreting in different ways.
SA: Exactly. I think there’s a vague sense of, “How did this happen?” Like, “Why would a Jewish woman and a Black man get married?” “Why is this young woman running a business?” And these question marks exist in people’s minds before I do. So, all of this influences why I’m constantly trying to perform for myself rather than for others.
GG: And in that vein, I love asking this question: How do you perceive yourself? How do you define your own identity?
SA: I definitely feel tapped into an old soul—like I’ve lived multiple past lives. I’ve been a grandma so many times, I just know it.
GG: Do you feel like there’s a guiding energy from those past lives?
SA: Yeah, I don’t have a malicious bone in my body—except if I’m hungry. If I’m hungry, it’s a different story and I need to get my rigatoni going.
GG: Hunger is such a hater.
SA: Right? But really, I think I’m always trying to get back to that core self—this nice grandma inside me, who’s relearning how to be that person again.
GG: I love that. We all need to nurture both the grandma and the inner child within us.
SA: I feel super connected to my childhood self, too. I bring out the child in others, which is great, but it also means sometimes people don’t take me seriously. Like, they assume I won’t care about things, but I do. I’m just nice.
GG: The pitfalls of being nice are so real. Okay, shifting gears—if you could have a dinner party with any artists, dead or alive, who would be there?
SA: Ooooh, okay. Milton Glaser, because I actually knew him, and he was lovely. Adrian Piper—who is very much alive, and I should honestly just reach out to her. Kerry James Marshall because he’s brilliant. And then, my Superposition artist group, because I’d want them to meet each other, too.
GG: Do you have an art world “Roman Empire”?
SA: Wait, what does that mean?
GG: Something a lot of people probably never think about but it consumes you. It’s like a TikTok trend where women ask their boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire and they respond like, “oh three times a week,” or something way too frequent.
SA: Oh, yes. What to wear to Art Production Fund Galas! The themes are always insane.
GG: What’s the craziest one you’ve encountered?
SA: This year’s theme is slumber party, and I really want to wear a sleeping bag with arm holes cut out. But I don’t want people to think I’m copying Heidi Klum’s worm moment.
GG: It’s different! Entirely different interpretations. And now it’s on the record, so nobody can take the idea.
SA: Right?
GG: What’s the last TV show that left a deep impression on you?
SA: The Lioness series with Nicole Kidman and Zoë Saldana. It was great to see so many female characters in roles of extreme power, especially in spaces that are traditionally “bad America, guns” type narratives. Seeing that there are women interfacing in those scenarios too is really cool. It’s such a treat to watch two women that are so well-known for how beautiful they are and how they’ve portrayed femininity in past roles take on something heavy hitting like this show.
GG: Have you seen Severance?
SA: Oh, yeah! I just started it and fell asleep right as the girl was trying to open the door so I’m excited to see what happens.
GG: Do you think there’d be anything good about being severed in your life?
SA: Honestly, no. My whole life is art. There’s no separation.
GG: How’s your work-life balance?
SA: It was terrible for a long time. I was having panic attacks, breaking out in hives. But turning 30 made me take stock and be more selective. Now, I’m focusing on archiving and being intentional with my work instead of trying to be everywhere at once.
GG: That’s so important. Speaking of balance, do you have any secret talents outside of art?
SA: I’m really good at impressions.
GG: Who’s your go-to impression?
SA: Honestly, anyone. As a kid, if someone was talking loudly, I’d just start repeating them.
GG: That is both a gift and a curse.
SA: Exactly. Some people love it, some people are like, “Please stop.”
GG: If you had to live inside a painting, which one would it be?
SA: I already live in a few paintings! Gisela McDaniel has painted me, as well as Jessica Taylor Bellamy and Larissa de Jesus Negrón—Mickalene Thomas photographed me this year. These are all my favorite artists too.
GG: If you had to pick one artist’s work to be painted into, who would it be?
SA: Ooooh, Michael Butler’s works. I’ve worked with him through our shows at Eastville Community Historical Society. He paints these miniature-style portraits of Black & Indigenous ancestry in the Hamptons, and it looks like Bridgerton—big hair, ruffles, pocket squares, canes, all against beautiful beach landscapes.
GG: We’re both in our hoodies now, can you imagine a time where we were doing this shit in a corset?
SA: I know, it’s so crazy. Now people wear corsets on purpose.
GG: Are you a “list” girly?
SA: I’m more of a web girl. It’s like a matrix of prioritizations and it changes a lot. I actually have one right in front of me now. [Pulls out illegible legal pad]
GG: Would you feel comfortable reading a snippet?
SA: Yes, okay um: Nomadic gallerina, showing at Expo Chicago in April. I get to honor my family history from Gary, Detroit, and Chicago. We’re showing Maya Seas and Damien Davis.
Um, and then: Boughetto as a slur. I recently found out that someone called me Boughetto and I’m like, aren’t we all? Or do they mean that I’m bougie acting ghetto, or ghetto acting bougie? Why are we so focused on categorizing when it’s clearly multifaceted?
GG: Wait, that’s so funny I literally prepared a question asking if you thought “gallerina” was a derogatory term?
SA: Oh no, I don’t think so! I used to be a ballerina so I don’t mind it at all. I think we’re all just twirling around the art world.
GG: Too true. Should we make a 2025 art world ins and outs list to finish off?
SA: Yes, okay In: Sanford Biggers and his marble sculptures, sharing Spotify accounts with friends, Studio Museum opening up again, Arternal CRM software, wearing silver, going through your Saturn return with grace, Martha’s Vineyard summers.
GG: Obsessed with all of the above.
SA: Out: Co-dependency in all types of relationships, Winter, I’m so happy the cherry blossoms have buds outside my window. Vaping, not showing up.
GG: Perfect, now let’s talk about the nitty gritty details for the photoshoot on Monday.
SA: Yes, I want to show you my childhood modeling portfolio [laughs]…
Words by Gwyneth Giller
