As a small -scale painter, I am interested in meticulous manicures since 2005, when my mother introduced me to the sacred text – Klutz Nail tutorial book With six pel-off nail polish. Twenty years later, I pivot in DIY gel nails Fresh sets: contemporary nail art from around the world (2025), which contextualizes advanced manicures as a form of visual art and cultural expression.
In an insurmountable sea of art tutorials, product criticisms and proliferating inspiration photos on social networks, the photo book by Denton-Hurst is a static and portable snapshot in the state of art manicures. The casting of a large net, Deton-Hurst included interviews and work samples from 35 international artists from Mexico, India, Japan, Korea, and through the United States and Europe. In a brief introduction, It retraces the exponential growth in the culture of the show and the nail in the last two centuries, stressing how Vietnamese immigrants began to shape industry in the United States in the 1970s And the historical meaning of personalized nail art as a form of personal style for black women.
In an interview, Denton-Hurst told me that the engine of the project was not only to bring readers to appreciate their nails more, but also to attract attention both to the fine arts and fashion applications of the form by highlighting the artists who do a work of border break in the field.
“What is most interesting to me was the range of experience in each of the inclusive artist,” she said during a telephone call. “Some have been doing nails for many years while other people had come to practice more recently.”
Denton-Hurst noted that many art and design workers ended up rotating the nails in 2020 during the forties; I did it too. With the pandemic that rages around us, the nails have become an outlet for both anxiety and boredom, allowing artists to find a feeling of control and revive their creativity during a period of uncertainty and limited resources.
“I have the impression that it is so emblematic of the way the conversation on the nails changes and that people who are classic say:” What do you know? ” I should bring this to the nails, ”she continued.
This new era of avant-garde nails has continued to evolve in recent years, while material science has progressed in tandem with human imagination. Denton-Hurst cites the 2017 creation of the Gel-X nail extension system after catalyst for experimental nails, and new products for two-dimensional conceptions regularly shake the industry. 3D elements on the foundations of natural nails so that I could only describe like portable sculptures pushing fingers, the nails far exceeded the limits of a curved canvas of long millimeters.
Photography Fresh setsNails of novelty sculpted by Juan Alvear And Nathan Taylor stand out as structurally and conceptually wonderful. Moscow -based artist Margarita Tsibizova embraces the grotesque with its “dirty” signature claw extensions, while Tahvya “Tav” KrokFine precision makes references to the historical forms of art, of MANGA in Mandalas and Victor Vasarely's op art to Claude Monet's Impressionism.
Fresh sets In the end, emphasizes manicures as a means of cultural and personal expression for artists and customers. Hunting him with racialized and sexospecific criticisms of nail art as underlying, frivolous and non-professional, Denton-Hurst underlines that this form of portable art is not only an extension of our fingers, but an extension of ourselves, our inheritance, our interests and our stories.
