VENETIA INITIATIVES
Ethos
Our Story
These moments in our everyday lives transcend being defined and captured
Is it the beginning or the closing of something? It is hard to tell
dusk and dawn perhaps only define and capture the beauty which is felt and seen in these moments of ambiguity and timelessness
the feeling of simultaneously inhaling and exhaling
the fresh smell at the beginning of spring or the end of a long summer rain.
Visionaries, creators, and intellectuals have often tried to capture this moment and feeling, which dusk and dawn entail. Venetia Initiatives New York dwells between these moments that cannot be defined, categorized, or labelled.
An immersive space of creativity and aesthetics, where audiences can dance around the very spirit that dusk and dawn carry.
It is these transitional moments that Venetia Initiatives seeks to highlight
the in-between states of sleeping and awakening
softening and hardening, warming and cooling
the unknown, undefined, and curious territories that our minds and eyes hunt for.
- Nefeli Brandhorst October 2025
Dusk & Dawn
Meet the Founder
Venetia Kapernekas is an independent art consultant and curator, guided by an instinct for what is vital yet undefined in contemporary art. She began her career in the mid-1980s as Assistant Director at the Pascal de Sarthe Gallery in San Francisco.
In the early 1990s, Venetia returned to her hometown of Athens, Greece, where she founded Icebox (1994–1998), one of the city’s pioneering contemporary art galleries. Icebox gained recognition for its rigorous and diverse international exhibition program, establishing Venetia as a leading figure in the rapidly evolving contemporary art scene across Greece and Europe.
Moving to New York City in 1999, she founded the Venetia Kapernekas Gallery Ltd. in Chelsea. From 2005 to 2010, she curated conceptual and thought-provoking exhibitions that highlighted innovative contemporary artists working across a range of media. Among these projects was “Seven Line Drawings” (May–June, 2008), co-curated by Olivier Berggruen and accompanied by a limited-edition publication.
Between 2011 and 2017, Venetia lived in Munich, continuing her curatorial and consulting work within the art communities of Munich, Berlin, and Athens. Returning to New York, she launched Venetia Initiatives in Fall 2021 - a platform dedicated to amplifying independent art Modules and cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Venetia Kapernekas holds a BA in Political Science with a minor in Social Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in Filmmaking and Visual Studies from San Francisco State University.
Venetia Kapernekas
Collaborative Team
Creative Director
London
Suki Hussain is our Venetia Initiatives Creative Director / Graphic Designer based in London. Suki holds an Interior Architecture BA (Hons) from University of Westminster. A multidisciplinary designer with a refined approach, shaping ideas into innovative visual experiences.
Suki Hussain
Content Editor
Thessaloniki, Greece
Venetia Initiatives warmly thanks Ioustini Drakoulakou (based in Thessaloniki, Greece) for her collaboration from 2021 to 2024, as the main digital editor and content editor for our exhibitions and website.
During this time, she also produced the photography project Studies in Transformation (featured in the Atelier). Ioustini works as an independent photographer. She holds an MA in Photography (The Image and Electronic Arts) from Goldsmiths, University of London (2018–2019), and an MSc in Applied & Environmental Geology: Mineral Resources and Environment from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2015–2018).
Ioustini Drakoulakou
