Vegetable Venus, 2026
Xanthe Burdett
Wilder Gallery
This month on Artsy, Foundations 2026 has launched: a curated showcase highlighting artists at the beginning of their careers. With over 240 artists from around the world, this edition of Foundations is the perfect chance to discover emerging talents and buy fine art at an accessible price.
At Artsy, we’ve spent the last week poring over the showcase to find our favorites. We’ve handpicked five artists whose works are worth a second look, from abstractions made of seashells and tapioca beads to cake-laden paintings of consumption.
Charlene Tan
B. 1982, Houston. Lives and works in San Francisco.
Works available at: re.riddle
Homage to Kappi (Crab), 2025
Charlene Tan
re.riddle
Homage to Kappi (Crab) Abalone and Rhinestones, 2025
Charlene Tan
re.riddle
Artist Charlene Tan was born in Houston, but she spent three years of her childhood living with her grandmother in the Philippines. There, the artist remembers visiting an indoor market in Manila and seeing stalls full of freshwater pearls, beads, and rhinestones.
Now based in San Francisco, Tan’s artworks are in many ways inspired by that experience, as well as her grandmother, who was a seamstress and embroiderer. Tan creates abstract works that are inspired by tribal weaving traditions of the Philippines. Tan digitally scans found images of traditional weavings, edits them down to the essential pattern, and then retraces them by hand. The artist then adorns these patterns with pearls, iridescent shells, and Filipino food staples like ube powder or thousands of tiny pink tapioca balls.
Tan has described interpreting traditional Filipino weavings as decolonizing her mindset. Tan holds a BA in history and theory of contemporary art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been shown across the U.S., including solo shows “Warp/Weft” at re.riddle in 2024 and “Remembering” at Sarah Shepard in 2023. She has also been a visiting artist at Minnesota Street Project Studios in San Francisco.
Xanthe Burdett
B. 1995, Devon, England. Lives and works in London.
Works available at: Wilder Gallery
They came upon a clearing, 2026
Xanthe Burdett
Wilder Gallery
Like bees, I feel them brush softly against me, 2026
Xanthe Burdett
Wilder Gallery
British artist Xanthe Burdett paints strange, spectral female figures that appear at once human and botanical. Painted in thin veils of green hue, these women appear translucent, even ghostly, with vines and flowers twisting through their bodies.
In her painting Vegetable Venus (2026), a phantom woman reclines like an odalisque, greenery running through her body like a circulatory system. She seems to emerge from the foggy green landscape behind her. This imagery draws both from her personal memories and art historical inspirations, such as the medieval “Devonshire Hunting Tapestries” in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Burdett has described the works as concerned with “this idea of memory and history being caught in the ground and the earth beneath us—this space of the mythological animal world, but also this really fertile place that we can’t look into as humans.”
Burdett graduated with an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2024, after studying education, English, and drama at Cambridge. She opened a solo exhibition “Psychopomp" at Palo Gallery in New York last fall. Her work was recently on view with Wilder Gallery at Echo Soho in London.
Kriss Munsya
B. 1986, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lives and works in Vancouver.
Works available at: Galerie Robertson Arès
Syracuse, 2022
Kriss Munsya
Galerie Robertson Arès
Even – Washed Out. Genetic Bomb (framed | avec encadrement), 2022
Kriss Munsya
Galerie Robertson Arès
Photographer and filmmaker Kriss Munsya creates vibrant, staged photographs inspired by his experiences and dreams as a Black man navigating the world. Born in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Munsya moved to Belgium as a child. He was raised in Brussels and later relocated to Vancouver, where he lives and works today.
As a young man, Munsya embarked on an influential hitchhiking trip from New York to Rio de Janeiro, a sojourn that became the basis of his 2014 debut feature film, Us and Them. His experiences on the road reshaped his understanding of the world, including its normalized, sometimes violent racism, and his sense of self.
A self-taught artist, Munsya turned his focus to photography nearly a , coinciding with his increased involvement in social and ecological activism. His richly saturated color photographs picture Black people in gestures of intimacy and affection. He obscures his models’ faces with flowers, sequins, and fabric, anonymizing and universalizing them at once.
Munsya’s work is included in the collections of Canada Council Art Bank. He was a 2021 Hopper Prize finalist and one of ArtConnect’s Artists to Watch in 2023, with work featured in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The Nation, among others.
Olivia Sterling
B. 1996, Peterborough, England. Lives and works in London.
Works available at: Nibelungen Gallery
Cartoon Logic, 2025
Olivia Sterling
Nibelungen Gallery
Are we about to Kiss?, 2024
Olivia Sterling
Nibelungen Gallery
British artist Olivia Sterling paints the language of consumption—one slice of cake at a time. In her paintings, hands dig into frosted, sugary cakes, devouring the confections with a frenzied intensity. Her style is informed by children’s comic books as well as satirical illustrations, and her work often hints at the politics of race and class.
Sterling received her BA in fine art from the University of Derby in 2018 and her MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2020. That year she presented her solo show “It Clings Like a Leech” at Guts Gallery, London, and had a solo presentation, “White Bread,” at Cob in 2021. Her work has appeared in more than 50 group exhibitions in the U.K. and internationally, including at White Cube and the Saatchi Gallery.
Julia Policastro
B. 1992, Buffalo, New York. Lives and works in Philadelphia.
Works available at: Blah Blah Gallery
Lydia, 2025
Julia Policastro
Blah Blah Gallery
Cecily, 2025
Julia Policastro
Blah Blah Gallery
Artist Julia Policastro makes three-dimensional artworks that could be defined as both sculpture and painting. In these plaster, foam board, canvas, and oil works, hands emerge from pillow-like forms, holding flowers or grasping a letter between fingertips. Using a technique inspired by the 14th-century Italian quilting technique of trapunto, each of these works bears a woman’s name: Gina, Cecily, Janet.
The gestures they depict are seemingly mundane, but otherworldly, reminiscent of Robert Gober’s haunting handmade sculptures. Policastro has painted these works pale hues of whites, pinks, and yellows, giving them a faded, ghostly appearance. Her inspirations range from late medieval and early Renaissance Sienese artists to the works of Ken Price and David Hockney. Policastro received her BFA from Tyler School of Art. She has been included in group shows at Blah Blah Gallery, Deep Space Gallery, and Fleisher/Ollman, among others.
