Susana Simonpietri
Guest Curator
Photo by Tim Lenz
“I buy what I love and collect the random, weird things I’m drawn to to fill my walls.”
In a maximalist home in San Juan, Susana Simonpietri grew up surrounded by art most people spend a lifetime learning to collect. Her parents championed Latin American art, bringing home paintings and sculptures at a time when US and European markets hadn’t yet caught up to its value. Her father bought frequently at auction, which is how a piece by Wilfredo Lam, now held by the Whitney, ended up on the family’s walls. Her mother worked as a curator and kept an eye on younger, less established artists alongside the bigger names.
Susana is the creative force behind Chango, a Brooklyn-based interior design studio, affectionately named after the gregarious blackbird native to Puerto Rico. Chango embodies the playful, unexpected energy she and her team bring to every project, and a design practice built on carefully curated personality and practicality.
A childhood spent among art floor to ceiling taught Susana to love it fiercely. It also fed her design instinct in the opposite direction: a desire for pared-down interiors that lean on the artwork as the wildcard.
Photo by Jonathan Hokklo
“Buying the name isn’t the same as buying something you actually love and relate to.”
When a room feels chaotic, her first move is to strip it back to white and let the space breathe before she decides what belongs in it. But even in the most neutral room, art is where the Chango spirit finds its opening: a shot of color, a little vibrancy. Sometimes just unbridled whimsy. Susana has noticed that people take risks with art they’d never take with a sofa fabric. Given the chance, they get fanciful. A little bizarre, even.
That willingness to take a risk extends to how Susana sources art, both for herself and clients. She carries her mother’s habit of following new and emerging talent rather than reaching for established names. “Buying the name isn’t the same as buying something you actually love and relate to.”
Photo by Jonathan Hokklo
Looking inward, she’s consistently drawn to work by women, art that reflects parts of her own life back at her. In fact, at her Hamptons home, most walls are made vibrant through art by women artists. “There’s something about living with work made by someone whose experience feels closer to your own; you relate to it differently.” Her choice is clear: collect by kinship.
For anyone newer to buying art, she suggests giving yourself a framework, whether that’s women artists, South American artists, or only works on paper. Don’t view it as a limitation, but as a way to train your eye.
Photo by Tim Lenz
While Susana brought her curation together through kinship, memory, and instinct, you just need the last one. Trust it, or, in her words, “the quiet recognition of identity meeting itself in art.” Follow it wherever it takes you
Somethings Unexpected
Disforme by Liliana Patricia Alves Da Silva
Greek Key by Alicia Lachance
100 Microcosm by Monika Matsumoto
Navigating Impermanence No. 4 by Stefano Pallara