Who is VŨV: NOON?

Started by Filipa Lazarova and Ian Ziegler, two History of Art students at the University of St Andrews. Filipa is from Slovakia, while Ian is from the US, giving them a broad perspective on the art world. Both of them have a great passion for art, art business, and the exciting community that comes with it.

Filipa grew up rummaging through her glitter, glue and paint-filled desk just about every day after school. Through attending visual arts classes from the ripe age of six, to playing just about all the musical instruments out there, she developed a love for creating things, tangible and intangible alike. This further translated into her university studies, where she merged the creative aspect with the academic one and decided to pursue art history. As of now, she hopes to create something meaningful: an engaged community learning about art and all the intriguing things related to it. She has made it her life’s mission to platform overlooked voices, especially those of women and minorities in the art world, shining the light on the diversity it can offer.

Ian grew up flipping through the pages of the magazines his mother would receive in the mail, not caring for the words, paying attention only to the pictures that filled the pages. As he grew older, his interests shifted from the images on the pages to those displayed on walls, with attention to the boxes of text beside them. Ian sees the importance of both the pictures and the texts, and sees that they are in a symbiotic relationship; a piece of art can tell a story of heartbreak, pain, devastation, and renewal; however, it requires the text beside it to translate said story into something all people can understand. He believes that the art community is too tightly closed for all people to fully enjoy the art as the artist intended; he hopes that this magazine will be a ‘Rosetta stone’ for all people and open up a world that is so closed off.