Martine Syms Gets a New Commission From Toronto's Vega Foundation
Martine Syms is making a new work for the Vega Foundation, and it will appear in her survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The piece is titled RW-LO, ARTnews reported on 22 October 2026.
The Vega Foundation is a Toronto-based art organization founded by Elisa Nuyten, a philanthropist and collector. She splits her time between Toronto and Paris, and the foundation was established in 2022. Nuyten has described it as a more experimental counterpart to her collecting, focused on moving image work, meaning video and film made as art. Art Basel quoted her to that effect in 2024.
The foundation's model is simple to describe. It commissions new works, which means it pays artists to make pieces that did not exist before. Those works are then shown in museums and biennials, the large international exhibitions held every two years, before they join the foundation's own collection. Its website says the aim is to expand access to moving image art and to encourage conversations about the pressing issues of the day.
Among the video artists the foundation has backed are Martine Syms, Lucy Raven, Jordan Strafer and Stephanie Comilang. Syms' 2022 feature film, The African Desperate, was released in cinemas by Mubi, a film distribution company that also runs a streaming service. Her Los Angeles survey will be the setting for the new commission.
In September 2025, the Vega Foundation and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto announced a partnership. It formalizes three years of work together to present contemporary moving image pieces. The Power Plant said the agreement builds on that joint programme.
Moving image has been gaining ground in the art world. In ARTnews' 2025 survey of the best artworks of the 21st century so far, six of the top 10 were moving-image works. The form covers a wide range of work. Camille Henrot, who is represented by the gallery Hauser & Wirth, made Grosse Fatigue in 2013. It is a video essay about the creation of the universe, built from images and clips that open on a computer desktop, as if the viewer were scrolling through someone's files.
For a video artist, a commission can decide whether a new piece gets made at all. It also settles where the work will first be seen, and who pays for the screens, projectors and installation crews that bring it into a room. Those costs usually sit out of view, behind the names on the wall label.
What comes next for RW-LO has not been announced beyond its place in the Los Angeles survey.
