Remember this number
Acrylic, laminated paper, found objects on acrylic box
2025
TESS MANHATTAN
In an era of commercialized nostalgia-bait, authentic reminiscence is hard to come by—that is, until viewing New York-based artist Tess Manhattan’s work. Strewn across planks of wood or drowning in layers of gesso are the found objects and images that have come to define Tess’ signature collages and sculptures. Sonny Angels, seashells, My Little Pony dolls, coins, keys, and crosses are delicately glued amongst each other or overlaid with images of celebrities, redolent of childhood toy collections or teenage bedrooms full of posters. In Automatic Dream Girls (2026), photos of A-listers like Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift are collaged amongst stock images of sweet treats and stars, abstracted into the piece as seamlessly as the brushstrokes and splotches of color that engulf them. 

But between the softness of Tess’ nostalgic figurines and childhood idols are moments of edge and anxiety. In Hydra (2024), cute, mouse-like toys sprout from the head of a cat doll. Slathered in gesso, the creature appears immobilized, forever piercing viewers with its twenty blank eyes. Studio Diary: Door (2025) features rusted nails, a utility blade and weathered trinkets glued atop a part of a door. A flash photo with the words “Beauty Killer” tattooed onto an anonymous arm in cursive is shabbily pasted into the background, its threatening declaration rendered strangely intimate amid the surrounding memorabilia. 

Below, Tess and I discuss collaging, Mr. Beast, her conceptual gallery, Princess, New York, Trisha Paytas, and much more.  




By Sofi Cisneros

I would love to get a sense of your artistic beginnings and the evolution of your creative process. How has that influenced your artistic sensibilities and your aesthetics today?
I grew up in New York City, in Manhattan—hence, Tess Manhattan. I started doing art around 11 or 12, but I didn't really know I wanted to be an artist until I was 17. I had discovered conceptual art, like Cindy Sherman, or the idea that you can put pretty much anything in art and it doesn't have to be so linear. I started collaging a lot, and my sketchbook became my portfolio for RISD, where I studied film. So I've made work that spans different mediums and modes of storytelling, but a lot of it is influenced by pop culture, cute things, things that just generally bring me joy; but also over-the-top, intense expressions of commercial creativity. My work is really connected to things from my childhood—literally, objects that I've kept since I was a kid end up in my work. Growing up in New York definitely was a huge influence, and seeing the way that images and environments can merge together and create an experience, whether it's going to Times Square or going to Sephora. There used to be this Toys R Us store in Times Square with a ferris wheel in the middle of it—that was, like, my heaven. I just love commercial reality. Like, I was always obsessed with the idea of a mall, even though I never went to malls growing up.


There’s a few different themes across your work. One of them seems to be this sense of nostalgia and familiarization that comes from childhood objects and fixations that you've integrated into your pieces, like the Elsa sticker, Sonny Angels, My Little Ponies, seashells, doll shoes. What draws you to these types of objects in your adulthood and in your art?

I collect a lot. I have drawers and drawers filled with little boxes of things. For a while, I made jewelry, and that was my artistic practice for several years. Now that I'm painting and doing more sculptural work, a lot of the pieces from my jewelry have ended up in work. I'm really attached to certain things. In my work, once I'm done with an obsession, I'm able to let it go. It's like an ecosystem—stuff comes in, and then it slowly evolves into something else. Like, I don’t think I would put Sonny Angels in my work again, or doll shoes. It’s stuff that I've collected that I'm ready to let go. In a weird way, it's like I'm killing it. Especially because I'm super-gluing items to my pieces, they become dead objects, essentially. They’re never coming back. 



 Preparing for Pigeon
Found objects on matte board in acrylic
2024

Tower (Pregnancy, Justin Bieber Purpose Tour, Artemis, Tila Tequila)
Resin, acrylic, and found objects on board & wood
2023

I feel like your work also really evokes the notions of play, freedom and fun. Do you see your work as almost a rebellion, in a way, against maturity and trying to fit into these boxes of adulthood?

Yeah, I think it's maybe just a rebellion against anyone telling you that you have to be anything other than yourself. My work is really about expressing my interests and not being afraid of it. And art is supposed to be about creating the world you want to see. Like, I want to see a world that's full of ponies. That's awesome to me. 

I think that we lose touch with our inner child as we get older. And as an artist, it’s so important to listen to your inner child. All kids are encouraged to draw, and then at some point, you stop being encouraged. Why? It's so important and inherent for people to create. Creating what you want in this world is how you have your own autonomy and power. And so even though my work maybe looks sweet or has a cuteness to it, it comes from a very intense struggle and darkness. If I'm depressed, [art] is my way of making my world bright. 


Another through-line across your work is celebrity and internet culture. As someone who was raised by the internet and has always been a pop culture fan, I'm really fascinated by your integration of these memes and figures like Trisha Paytas, Justin, Bieber, or Taylor Swift into your pieces. What kinds of celebrities or personalities are you compelled to include in your work? And why do you do it?

I’ve been obsessed with celebrities for as long as I can remember and have always been very fanatical. I was born in the 90s, so the internet had just started when I was in middle school. I grew up with blogs like Perez Hilton. I would save tabloids in my drawers so my mom wouldn't throw them out. I was such a fan girl for the Jonas Brothers and Hillary Duff. I really started watching YouTube again in 2014, when I started college and was living alone. I found Tana at the beginning of her career. I’ve been obsessed with Trisha for over 10 years.

But I really like people who express first the dark and then the light again—people who have this hero's journey where they go from being an ordinary person, meet all these challenges, transform, then have a downfall. That’s why I’m interested in Jake Paul, even though he's a total villain. And like Justin; he was discovered on YouTube, so he's kind of the biggest social media star ever. He had this crazy journey fully alone; no one else has lived Justin Bieber's life in our lifetime. I like Taylor Swift for that reason too and how extreme she is. Stadium tours like hers have this ceremonial aspect of thousands of people singing together—that’s pretty profound. It's one of the only places we gather, besides church, and do stuff like that. Celebrities occupy the role that maybe saints once did in culture where we project a lot of our own lives onto them, and they become idols. 


Purpose, Believe, My World
Custom digitally-printed flags
2023

What's the significance in your work of juxtaposing more traditional art forms, like painting and sculpting and drawing, with these online and pop cultural phenomena?

I really like this question because I’m a huge art nerd. I was trained classically and I just respect painting so much. Paintings have this cultural value where we've decided they are these magical objects that people will want to care about for thousands of years. I'm really interested in art history, and thinking about what I would want to see paintings of, and like, I would want to see paintings with Trisha in them. I want her to be abstracted into the form of the artwork and the art to still be strong on its own without relying on her image for attention. I want the work to speak to a lineage of ways of making that have been done for thousands of years. 

I’m into social media, making podcasts, and posting. Those are instant forms of gratification that are, in ways, also artworks. But making art, in a traditional sense, has always been something that's important to me. I love making stuff with my hands, I love being in my studio, I love painting and I love making things that connect. I want to make work that can be in conversation with other artists I admire. That’s something that always drives me; I would go to museums growing up and just be like, I know I can find my voice here. 

Do you think online content is art?

I think all kinds of online content is art. Instagram stories are fascinating to me, because they’re this way of subconsciously delivering messages to people. YouTube—I think there's levels to it. That's why I'm interested in Mr. Beast. All his production is crazy. Those are million dollar videos with crazy sets; but then you have a Trisha, and she doesn't need any of that. Her performance alone is so strong that she's most interesting when she's just in her car talking. The scope of creativity that YouTube allows—it’s this blank canvas that you can post anything on.  Any kind of posting can be art. Posting on your feed, posting on whatever platform, if you think about it with that sensibility, it can be a work.


Yeah, I actually listened to when you went on your own podcast and talked about this—it kind of rewired my thinking. If you just post and you think about it as an art practice, then it alleviates that pressure of trying to show people your real life. I thought that was really profound.

Yeah, posting is so liberating. You have to separate yourself from it. Posting on Instagram has brought me so many beautiful things in my life, and it's such a great way to connect with people. When I started my Instagram account, TheRealRealReal, I was doing a lot of internet history—I don't know how to describe it other than an archive account. I built a community, but then I took everything down. I was like, I'm starting over and had to kind of question, Who am I? And then I created Tess Manhattan as my art avatar. Posting is really something you can totally control and it’s a really amazing way to create the life you seek.


Studio Diary: Door
Found objects, gesso on wood
2025

Whether physical memorabilia or random online images you really focus on found objects  in your practice. How do you go about scavenging for these materials? And how do you know when a certain image or object fits the piece that you're working on?

There’s a lot of different ways. I live in Brooklyn, and there’s a lot of really good stuff people leave on the street. On the weekends, I’ll go through my neighborhood and find stuff on the street. Or I’ll go Ebay thrifting. People actually give me stuff a lot too because I have such a distinctive taste. When something's right, it just feels right; sometimes it's the color, sometimes it's the shape, or there's a certain quality that I just am drawn to, whether it's kind of fucked up looking or cute. I love finding little rusty pieces of metal, and juxtaposing that with a toy. I love little things with faces. I paint things white because I like to reduce the form of the object. 


I really like what you said about how you don't want your work to be completely flawless all the time. And I think that comes through in how you completely coat objects in that white gesso. It has this drooping effect where objects look frozen in time.

One thing with gesso is I layer it a lot. Often, I'll be with a piece for months just repainting it and painting it again. It depends on the objects. Like plastic—gesso doesn't stick to it well the first time, so I have to just slowly do it. But I love gesso. I've been working with it for a while. It's maybe not even the best kind of paint for what I do, but I like that you can kind of build upon it. I also use a lot of matte gel medium. And I love a hot glue. I use this clear gorilla glue. If they ever stop making it, I'm screwed. 


Why is collage the best medium to represent these themes of nostalgia and internet culture that are present in your work?

I think collage is an interesting medium because it doesn't get a lot of love in the art world. It's hard for it to transcend this craft notion and move into more of a fine art space. But I think what I do, and what I've just always been drawn to, is this idea of the amalgamation of things. Whether it's objects, video, painting or sculpture, I'm really interested in the way things come together. I think it speaks to the material world we live in now, where we're surrounded by so many different images, whereas I like to choose what I want to see. There's something about it that feels so electric when I collage, like I’m putting together my own world. 

Craft is a really interesting subset of art also because it's kind of like women's work, and traditional folk art, like quilting or embroidery. Collage is very Victorian too, dating back to these collage books that Victorian women kept to record their lives. I’m interested in those connections between craft as this traditional way of women recording their lives and how that can connect to art. 


You've also curated a number of shows, like Death Cafe last year, or War at Drama Gallery. What do you look for when you're scouting for work and artists to show?

It’s different for each show. I think living in New York and being part of the arts scene here, there are artists that I see that I'm like, Why are they not being shown more? I like bringing people together from different social scenes and different backgrounds, or people that maybe aren't traditionally thought of as artists. I feel like by putting on shows, it's like putting on the captain's hat. I get to set the tone of what I think is important, and who I think people should be looking to. 

When I curate a show, there's always an energy that I'm trying to put out. With War, it wasn't about any literal war, but more about how difficult it is to create, period. Group shows, to me, are like competitions. Like, these are my fighters, and they're fighting against each other for attention in this room. That's an interesting tension to create. Curating is like a form of collage too in that you're collaging people and their voices together. The shows I curate are like installations themselves. It’s not so much about the individual works as it’s about what they do together. Sometimes I find people online, but usually it's through going to openings and just being in the New York art scene and the DIY space for almost 10 years. It took me a while to get a footing, or to have people be even interested in what I was doing, so I want to share that opportunity and be a voice of a collective vibe. 


I'd love to know about—is it narrative navigation, or narrative warriors, or content warriors?

Like, all three. That started in 2023. I was really Mr. Beast-pilled. I was like, I want to take over YouTube, and I need to have people that are down to strategize with me. And so I did this open call. We started meeting on Google Meet, and the rest is history. We had a YouTube channel together, and then ran a meme account, @narrative.navigation, and then the Warriors. We've done several events. We did philosophy together. One of the warriors did a show in North Carolina called The Cat Show. Every year we produce a calendar and we just had an event at Nightclub 101 for it. It's really just a collective that's based around supporting each other and our work, and using Instagram as a way to connect like-minded people. It’s a great way to form a community around shared ideas about art and what art can do online. 


I'd love to also learn about Princess Gallery. Why did you decide to open up a space of your own, especially at a time when galleries in lower Manhattan seem to be shuttering left and right? What has it been like running it? Any favorite shows you've held there?

Yeah, so actually, we only had that space for a month. It’s kind of conceptual now, but I think that's what's fascinating about it. Essentially, it's me and my partner, Jeff Eggner, who is a painter. We wanted to start a project where we could put shows on ourselves. I rented the former No Gallery space on Henry Street in August of 2024. We had it for a month, and did four shows in that one month. After that, people really thought we were a gallery, even though every show has been in a different location, and some of the shows that we have planned are going to be more online. 

The idea of a gallery as a concept is interesting to me. You could just have an Instagram account, take photos in a space, and call it a gallery. It's crazy the amount of respect and attention you get when you're running a gallery versus as an artist. Even watching my account grow speaks to the lack of spaces that artists feel welcome in. I don't see myself as becoming a gallerist ever, but I always will want to create space for community. That's primarily the goal of Princess—taking the idea of a gallery and not having any limits on what it is. It's never really been about selling work. Art is really about the spirit of sharing. And so having a space where I can share other people's art is really fun. 


I was talking to the owner of Sitting Room Gallery last week, and he was like, “I want this to be a space where it's more community-based than your typical sterile, traditional art gallery. I want to have coffee. I want people to make waffles and talk and drink. I want to make this into a creative agency for all these artists.” I think your sentiment aligns with that growing sentiment of everyone just wanting to have fun together. Like, it’s not that deep.

Yeah, exactly. I think that having this traditional, hierarchical setting where we're all trying to be in these shows for some elusive, wealthy person—that's why we see so many galleries closing. There needs to be community. If you look at art historical movements, they all started with communities, with people gathering around food, like the Impressionists. They would have salons where they'd all eat soup together. That's the vibe. We can't just all be doing solo shows in random places. We have to be together. Creating that energy is super important to the vitality of art.