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The Curation by Nour Hassan
The Curation, formerly Radical Contemporary, is a Digital Curator and Podcast based between Cairo, Dubai & Jeddah. We curate everything from art, fashion, and design, to culture, wellness and tech to present you with only the best brands, founders, products and pioneers.
The Curation by Nour Hassan
Amina Debbiche & Nora Mansour: The Open Crate On Private Collections & Digital Legacy
The Open Crate is a digital art platform launched by Amina Debbiche, a Tunisian art specialist and Nora Mansour, originally from Lebanon who previously worked with leading art and design entities like Art Basel and Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery.
In this episode the two co-founders share how The Open Crate grew from a printed catalog into a private, global platform that secures provenance, organizes collections, and opens access to context, education and insight on the art market in the MENASA region without compromising privacy. We explore themes of trust and resistance, the importance of heritage preservation through documentation, motherhood and entrepreneurship, fashion’s overlap with art, and The Open Crate's roadmap to future-proof archives.
A few topics covered in this episode are:
• Founder backgrounds from finance to cataloging
• Why Dubai and the region needed digital structure
• Turning point with a major Iranian collector Mohamed Afkhami
• Privacy, trust, and resistance to online archives
• Traits that win clients and sustain growth
• Complementary roles and building while parenting
• Art, fashion, design, and lifestyle as one ecosystem
• Vision for Open Crate Lab and AI provenance
• Training the next generation of art specialists
• Routines that protect focus, energy, and creativity
If you'd like to learn more follow The Open Crate on Instagram and as always, if you enjoyed this conversation, please share it, leave a review, and stay tuned for more curated voices from across art, fashion, and culture on The Curation Podcast hosted by Nour Hassan.
Welcome back to the Curation Podcast. I'm your host, Noor Hassan, and today we're diving into a conversation at the intersection of art, technology, and cultural heritage. I'm joined by two inspiring Arab women, Amina Debish and Nora Monsour, co-founders of the OpenCrate. Together they've built a digital art platform that's redefining how we preserve and manage collections, from art and design to luxury objects. Their mission is not only about cataloging, but about protecting cultural heritage, personal, regional, and collective. Their clients include some of the most important collectors and cultural voices in the region. And they've recently been featured in Vogue Arabia, Harper's Bizarre Interiors, and Arab News. Beyond their professional work, they bring a fresh perspective on lifestyle, travel, and fashion that makes them true cultural curators. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation about digitizing culture, preserving heritage, and living creatively. And now to my conversation with Amina and Nora, the co-founders of The Open Crate. Right now I'm speaking with Nora Mansour and Amina De Vish of the Open Crate. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation because not only is it one of your first podcasts, potentially your first podcast, but also the concept of the open crate, I haven't received a press release like this in a while. That has made me really feel like I'm super interested to kind of learn more and understand how it is that you put this project together. So I think the best way to start would be for you each to introduce yourselves to the audience briefly, and we'll talk more about the open crate.
SPEAKER_02:So hi everyone. And thank you for the amazing uh feedback about the open crate. Uh, we've been we we launched the open crate six years ago. Uh I'm Emina de Bisch, I'm Tunisian, born and raised, and I've been living in Dubai now for the past 10 years. And this city kind of like planted the seed inside of me to to even like consider being an entrepreneur. And this is how the OpenCrate kind of was born by my meeting with Nora.
SPEAKER_00:So hi everyone, I'm uh Nora Monsour. Thank you, Nora, for having us today. It's really a great new uh experience to have our first broadcast and to have it with you. So I'm a Lebanese, um born and raised, and I've been living in the UAE for also over 10 years now. Uh started the company with Amina seven years ago, uh, with all its uh challenges and beautiful things, and we'll tell you more about it now. I'll let Amina tell you her story and then I'll share mine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So you can tell it's our first podcast, right? We're very like, hey, no guys, you guys are natural. We'll get into the flow, we'll get into the flow. So as I said, Nora and I met in Dubai, and I guess like at some point, you know, throughout our careers, my career, I've been building like my art career for the past 14 years. Like I started in after studying banking and finance in Paris, I uh quickly understood that wasn't for me. I loved the the whole kind of like logical, systemic, like um um uh repetitive aspect of mathematics, but I knew that finance wasn't my calling. And when I moved to London, I considered having another master in modern contemporary art. I did it at Christie's education, where I totally fell in love with the process of cataloging an artwork, an object, any object actually. And I loved again the repetition of it, how precise it's super surgical the way you catalog an artwork. And there's like very kind of like specific steps to follow, how to do an artwork. And I was like, oh wow, I love it. And and I got very lucky. I got um to work at Christie's in the post-round contemporary department in London. Uh, and when it was really starting to like, you know, overtake the Impressionism department, like everybody was talking about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anish Kapoor, uh Anthony Gormley, uh, Diamond Hearst, like all those names starting to get like gain so much momentum. Um, and I guess like after a few years, after actually, no, left Tunisia when I was 17, very uh European centered, like very kind of like I want to live in the West, I want to learn from the West.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes, yes. Interesting. And but like, how come? How did you kind of curiosity?
SPEAKER_02:We're like we're like a post-colonial kind of country where French is very present. We all go to French school, American schools, and we grew up with a sense of like everything everything is better in the West, you know, versus like, oh yeah, Tunisia has so much to offer. I was very kind of like, no, I'm gonna live in Paris, London, New York. This is where I'm gonna live, this is how I'm gonna build my expertise, and and that's what counts. And at some point, I was actually at a dinner uh at the Tate Modern. I was working at Christie's, and it was a gorgeous retrospective of Gerard Richter, uh, one of the most incredible artists of our time. And I was sitting next to um a very important collector from New York, and he started asking me questions about Arab artists, and my knowledge on Western art was kind of on point. But when it came to Arab art, I was clueless. And he looked at me in a very kind of like, you know, loving way, telling me, like, listen, your name is Emina, you're from Tunisia. It's kind of expected from you to know all of those artists. And he kind of like interesting seeds in November. And fast forward like the next year, August, I was like, you know what, I think I'm gonna move to Dubai. This is the um the epicenter of of the art market right now. Um, I owe it to myself to to kind of learn and understand who I am through the gaze of art history and and let me see how how diverse and rich this is. So after you know moving to Dubai, I joined Art Dubai in the in the uh VIP uh department. I mean, it sounds very, you know, like VIP sounds very sophisticated and maybe a bit special, but actually like it's extremely, extremely like rich because as a VIP department uh manager, I get to like talk to collectors from uh the MINASA peninsula, like from uh, you know, collectors from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, um uh even South Asia. Uh, and I got to discover incredibly sophisticated collections. And at some point I was like, you know, I had a frustration between like how opaque and fragmented the art world was at that time, and especially for collectors in the Middle East, like I was like, okay, they have this, those incredible collections who kind of hold a national importance because you know there wasn't a lot of museums back in the days. Today, museums like it's the one word that everybody's using, whether it's Saudi, like Qatar, or Egypt, even like, but when I moved in Dubai 10 years ago, it wasn't like at the forefront of every kind of like, you know, yes, yes. So I was like, okay, let us create something that uh kind of uh merges rigor and elegance and a platform that brings transparency, like digital infrastructure, uh, but also a curatorial eye for private collectors. Um, I wanted to um have structure, uh, discretion and trust through a tool that is kind of like avant-garde, you know. I wanted collectors to be able to have their collection inside their pocket with all the information related to every single artwork in one click through a very private app, which is the Open Crates. So yeah, at some point I was like, uh yeah, it became a bridge between art and technology, but we kept a very human core at it with a dedicated manager.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think it's interesting because you came at a time where, like you said, there was not enough information and there were not yet established institutions. And so kind of digitizing it immediately, was this your first instinct? You never thought of creating, for example, I don't know, a space, a physical space, or any other way of going about kind of archiving and documenting these collections. Because I think it's very smart that you, like you said, it's avant-garde. You took three steps ahead and you were like, let's just go for the digital and make it so that it is accessible to the collectors. And how did that thinking come about?
SPEAKER_00:I'll I'll get to that because that's a very good question. Because we didn't really start off thinking digital. So my background is not as um, I started more in finance. So my uh choice to start the Open Create with Amina is like both linked to a story of friendship, but then a deep desire to pursue a path in in the art industry. Because I was more in the financial world, so I joined Pricewaterhouse Coopers as a consultant, and then I continued my career into a merger and acquisition position with the Bin Laden group here in Dubai. But these experiences kind of really helped solidify my knowledge in business. And despite, you know, having like doing well in the financial world, I realized that something was missing. You know, I was one I was very hungry for something different. And I remember I went to uh visit my aunt Rola Wesney in Paris. And at the time she was working with Carpenter's Workshop Gallery, which is uh one of the most important design galleries in the world. And this is when I realized, yeah, I needed like a change, you know, like a twist in in my career. And I remember when I visited this space, uh every single piece, I was attracted to every single piece. I wanted to know more about the artist, about the story, about the medium, just discover more. Like I had a lot of questions, and this is when I'm like, okay, I really need to dwell into this world. And I remember there was this one work uh by Andrea Bronzi, which is an architect and an artist, um, an Italian architect and artist. And uh so he had this work that's like uh made up out of steel with like this real trunk, uh tree trunk intersected intertwined intersected in it, which I found very interesting how he managed to kind of dwell the manufacturer world with like more nature, and that was the start. And I got lucky to find a job at Carpenter's Workshop Gallery in London, and I got to travel with them, and I think this was extremely important to kind of open my eyes because I get to do art first in Dubai and London and Paris and Art Basel. And this is when we really like discover, you know, all of these artists, and then when I came back to Dubai and I saw and discovered how many incredible collections there were, and I was approached by this collector to document his collection and to kind of catalogue, and he's been trying to do that more for the past three years, and he hadn't managed anyone because he didn't have find the right person who had the expertise for it. So when we we started working on that, when I started working on that, and I kind of shared that with Amina, Amina's like, it's so important to kind of document, and this was a massive collection that had very or very little documentation. And we started off as doing it through a book. So it wasn't like a digital, uh, there wasn't a digital imprint yet. And when we started doing the book and cataloging everything, archiving the information, making sure the artist named the provenance, the passport of the work, the history, the artist bios. Um after we after finishing that project, we realized that you know he was buying more. There are things that were moving around. You can't keep track by printing, and of course, you don't want to print books, you know, like right, yeah, yeah. So this is when the idea of going digital kind of um came. And and we're like, okay, we need to really build a platform that allows people to document and you know, have access to the information that's at the core of their collection. But not only that, when you you use the digital platform, you also have so many functionalities and tools. So you kind of make smarter decisions and you kind of can take it to the next level. And yeah, here we are like seven years later, really trying to preserve, you know, this all of this this art and all of these this information and to protect it for the future.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's interesting. Both of you are doing the work essentially of you know heritage preservation through a digital platform. And I'd love for you to share an example of a collector or a project or a specific collection where you felt like it really was kind of a turning point for the open crate and a turning point for both of your careers because it's interesting you both have sort of financial backgrounds and did not essentially come from the art world, but you entered into the art world and took your background and sort of built this, you know, platform that now acts as not only as Arab heritage preservation, but also kind of a documentation and archival space. So, what was kind of a collection or a particular moment where you felt like this work is very important and it's also being very well received?
SPEAKER_02:I have to say that every single collector we come across, we're like, wow, that's so important what we're doing, because like we keep on discovering new artists, new masterpieces, artworks that were like made in the 30s by art activists, by women like by like Inje Flatun, who painted in in jail, or who's a poet, an activist, a philosopher, a writer. Like, like there's so much to say about those artists, and just the fact that we get to access like a specific word they did, specific work they did in the 30s or the 40s with a text attached to it that describes a moment in life, maybe a historical moment in our region or in our country, or even in the evolution of feminism in the 20s in Egypt. Like every for me, archiving, if you are like I'm obsessed with making sure that data is protected for the future, like anything you archive, where like uh and and so fascinating to document how we we live right now, like the glass that I'm using, the phone that I'm using, the laptop. I have we have a client that also collects Apple uh items, you know, from the iPod to the first laptop to now like you know, iPhone 17. So um to respond to that, like for me, every single collection feels so special. But the turning point, and he's one of the first uh clients who really trusted us with the OpenCrate. You know, we were just two young women in our late 20s, um, creating a brand out of nowhere, accessing, asking people to let us access the most intimate emotional item in their life, which is like collecting art, you know, getting house, opening uh their rooms and seeing what they have on their wall. And I always say to our clients, like, it's incredible how much I get to I get to know you better once I get to see your collection because there is only so much you can say with words, there is only so much you can say with how you dress or like your job, or but the collection gets me accessing something almost subconscious about you, which I love because it tells a story about every step of your life. Um, and uh the collector that really, really trusted us, and I remember I love saying that that because I'm so in awe with my business partner Nora, because you know, she's not only an entrepreneur, she's a mom of two kids, she's a wife, she's an incredible woman. And when we created that company, I remember she was pregnant with her first kid, and it was like uh a huge collection of 800 works of almost 200 artists. This collector, Mohamed Ev Khami, has exhibited his collection in New York, in Canada, in um uh Dubai, in Abu Dhabi. And um, we can't he kind of trusted us with one of the most important Iranian collections in the world that it and that shows, you know, how the the responsibility of private collectors in the public sphere, because through this collection, he's showing and telling such a different narrative about Iran. Um, so me and Nora, who knew like, come on, like top 10 artists in Iran, maybe, but we started knowing like literally from like the little guy that sells his works for like$200 to the most important. And like we we we went through modern art and also very, very uh ancient object of the Safavid era, or and it was just like such an incredible journey because we started with inventory, and and you know, you get to know that person uh because you you get to sit down with them a lot, and then you know, once they understand what they have with Mohammed Ev Khami, we were like, okay, let's create a catalog that you can like um gift to your guests when they come to your house so they can go back home with a story to tell. And whenever they want to know about the artists that they saw in your house, they can read the book. And then we're like, okay, but let's let's create a virtual museum because maybe a student that is studying Islamic art in Stanford University wants to know about more about Iran, and maybe he can like so we when we thought about virtual museum, we thought about content, we thought about it like a podcast. We were like, okay, what can we do to we will never replace the physical interaction with an artwork? This is virtually impossible. So we were like, what is digital uh uh filling as a gap? It's content. We can create content, so every single artwork has a story. You can also distort an artwork, you can make like a carpet, like a plane made of a carpet that is super tiny, gigantic, and flying around the structure. You can actually hire a real architect that is uh uh he actually won the Agakan uh museum uh prize. Um and he he's the one I forgot his name to, but he's the one who who uh created the structure. He hired a proper curator, uh uh Fereshteh Daf Fereshteh, who uh is um an incredible creator of Iranian art. So, you know, like it's just like this adventure that keeps on growing. Then he published a book with Fiden. Now we're working on launching his online archive of every single artwork he's ever collected. So this for me, and I I talk with it with a lot of passion because you know, it gets one super important collector to trust two young girls, and this is what he did, and I'm so grateful for that. And this is for me like a turning point. And I remember Nora like documenting, you know, with her beggie like eight months, and and she was like, entering that.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, no, she's like, you know, honestly, that's an incredible, incredible like anecdote as to how much it takes just one person to really trust vision. And then from there, I don't think that there's any going back. You know, you move forward at that point. And it's like you said, it is kind of an educational tool at the end of the day. I love that you mentioned students and the idea that now essentially the younger generation is learning much differently than we did. They need these digitized, accessible tools as they will listen to a podcast like this and understand better how two, for example, young Arab women built a platform like the Open Crate. But I'd love to touch on that since you mentioned it, Amina, which is how were you received in the art world at first? What challenges did you face as, again, two young Arab women and you had a vision, it was different. And how was there any pushback? Was there were there many supporters? Can you tell us a bit more for you and Nora? And of course, I want Nora to touch on the aspect of being a mother as well at the time, becoming a mother.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'll start with the pushback and I'll let Nora continue on that. But oh, the adventures we had, me and Nora. Like, honestly, take so much like a leap of faith, and it's so good that we didn't know what was gonna come after because we maybe you wouldn't have done it. We were just like, Yeah, we're gonna create a digital archive for collectors, and we're like, okay, but we don't have a background in tech. And how is it done? And and you know, the art market is so resistant to any kind of like technological innovation, you know. It's it's it's one of the most opaque and fragmented market for that reason, because there's like such a resistance uh because it's a resistance, I believe, to innovation in general.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I remember when there was the the first like digital section at Art Dubai a couple of years ago, and it was like a whole frenzy. And I mean, I just think that that's really interesting, and and not just that, it's kind of uh uh it's a difficult market to access in general to understand.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, and it's like there's like they do three steps ahead and then they go back two steps. Like, look at Christie's, they just shut down their digital department, which they know with the NFTs and post-COVID, etc. But I would say that for me and Nora, uh, the resistance was mostly don't forget we're Middle Eastern, we are talking to a certain culture. People are very private about their homes, they're very humble. It's not kind of culture. And what when they collect, to be honest, like it's not like in the US or in in Europe where you have like you know a lot of like uh defiscalization and incentives, it's really like they started to buy art out of love. And so when the the resistance was more like uh first to enter their house and their their universe, but it it it kind of like eased up when we were recommended from you know words of mouth and and building trust, and they saw that we're so super, super private and confidential. And I guess as well, it's like online. Oh my god, online means it's means it's public, everybody's gonna know what I have, etc. Interesting. I think COVID really helped into like just jumping 10 years ahead in the sense that people understood that you can't in in 2025, and even back in the days in 2021, like you can live in a world where you live through papers and Excel sheets and and a few pictures on your on your on your phone and a couple of invoice on an email. Like you can't treat this asset in such a non-important way. Like it's a very important asset, it tells a story, it holds value, it holds a feeling, it's an and it's it's an investment, and it has been one since the middle of the middle age, actually. Like, um, so it's it's it's a super old investment asset. And yeah, the resistance was that's the two ones that would come up to mind. I don't know, Nora, what you think?
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, yeah, exactly. So this was particularly like the idea, especially when we, you know, we're talking to people from the from the region, like having things online was maybe a bit of the privacy, a bit of the confidentiality, a bit of heavy things in public was the major uh pushback. And they didn't really understand the whole thing. Like it's a very new concept. So what Amina and I built is extremely niche. And till today, whenever we share, I share, like we share what we what we've created, a lot of people were like, oh, how did you come up with that concept that's extremely that's extremely niche and smart and useful, but people didn't think about it and didn't see the purpose of it. So when we'd go and we'd be like, we want to document your collection, we want to do the cataloging, we want to make sure that you have an intellectual property over what is it that you own, you want to have accountability over your collection. Like Amina said, it's an asset. So at the beginning, the pushback was mainly to have it online, but then as soon as that barrier kind of cut, and of course, COVID was a major player because people got more comfortable to, you know, started looking at art first through, you know, uh through uh different um digital solutions, uh, having more Zoom calls, receiving, you know, a lot of the art through PDFs. That kind of helped break that barrier. And it was it's interesting because one client that stood out, so she like understood the concept of cataloging and she really wanted, so we did like inventory books for her, and she she understood how important is it it was, but then the online she kind of got stuck on that on that aspect. And now, five years later, we still work with her, and she reached out to me this summer and she's like, Nora, I'm ready to go digital. And I'm like, Oh, that's amazing, but what was the switch? And then she's realized, she's like, you know, the more I the more like we know we keep doing adventure, and the more to kind of keep track of everything became more challenging for her. And seeing the all the benefits of having all of that accessible to you in your pocket through an app with all of the functionalities finally kind of kicked in. And it was a major for me, a major point where I feel like okay, we've converted a very, very like resistant client into uh into becoming a TOC member on the platform.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting. And I guess at that point you feel like, okay, so I mean, essentially archiving in papers, etc., like you guys just said, it's kind of very ephemeral. It it does run the risk in this day and age of kind of you know wasting all of that work because there's no way to guarantee that it remains intact. But I mean, I want to understand from the perspectives that you have as Middle Eastern women, I feel you brought something different to the kind of the world of archiving art, the world of digitizing art. You had your own perspective from growing up um, you know, in Tunisia or Lebanon, traveling the world and coming back. What have been the most important, like you would say, character traits that you guys have that have made clients trust you, that have made them believe that it's it's really the open crate is the platform to you know sacredly hold their collection? Because I think my audience is always very interested in like you as individuals, like what are the traits that make you different in in this particular field?
SPEAKER_02:I think first and foremost, like honestly, um, it's integrity and and you know, it really came from an urge, uh like a profound, genuine urge between me and Nora to do something good for our region. Like it wasn't like, okay, let me of course, of course, we want to make money. Of course, we're gonna be like we're profitable and we're super proud of it. And we're like two entrepreneurs that built a successful company, but we are extremely genuine in our approach, authentic. And I think it's super important in that in that region. We know that it can be just like I'm trying to sell you a product. No, like I'm I'm talking to a collector who understands this emotional object and wants to work with people who are loyal, intelligent, and who have integrity. And I think the fact that we're women, we approach leadership with through empathy and depth. Um, and again, like growing up in Tunisia, you know, you always have to negotiate between heritage and modernity all your life. Uh it's the it's a duality that shows it's it's it's that duality that shows how we build bridges across culture and and and we bring sensitivity, nuance, uh, but also some sort of a boldness to to redefine how the region is perceived. Like, you know, uh now that Dubai, you know, Dubai is everybody knows Dubai now. Dubai chocolate, Dubai this, Dubai that, everybody moves to is moving to Dubai. But I still struggle with how they think the world perceives us. So I love to kind of like break uh the the mold of how they think, but how is it to be a woman and live in Dubai or like how is it to be an entrepreneur? I'm like, I've never felt more respected and more empowered than when I actually moved back to my region. Uh and we're not talking representative, we really are architects of its next chapter. Like they um we wanted to do something for the Arab world in order for the Arab world to be part of the dialogue, you know? And when we say we document, we started, don't forget, okay, we started with the Middle East, we started with Dubai. Nora brought an incredible roster of clients from Lebanon because it's really embedded in Lebanese culture to collect. I love that. It's such a creative like city and and country. And but we started with the Middle East, uh, but not all Middle Eastern collector by Middle Eastern art, like that's a cliche. Some Middle Eastern clients have one of the most incredible Western collections in the world. Like they could compete with the biggest museums here or in the West.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I think that's actually a really, really interesting point because I think that's a misconception. People do think that Middle Eastern collectors collect exclusively Middle Eastern art. I don't know where that came from. But I think it's it's so cool that you're both from different also parts of the Middle East. So you're Tunisian, Amina, and you're Lebanese Nora, and you're both in Dubai now, you know. And I just want to know what have what have kind of like what's the dynamic in in in between both of you? Like, what do you think your strengths are versus Amina's strengths are versus Nora's at the open crate? Because I feel like your personalities are so different, but they complement each other perfectly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's very true. So I think one of the reasons this the company and Amina and I worked is that we're complementary. So we both are very passionate about the business. And like to go back to that idea of when we talk to clients, they can see how much we care and how like trustworthy we are. And that comes out from both of us. But I think each one brings a different side. So for example, I have a very business kind of man, like a business-oriented kind of approach to things. Like, you know, I always think, you know, about I take care of the financial aspects of the company, the legislations and you know, the licenses and and how everything needs to work. And you know, Amina has that more in-depth expertise about the art. And you know, she was with Christie's and then Art Dubai, and and I think that each one of us also in terms of how we kind of our personalities, so we can we we manage to tackle each, you know, if there's if there's a problem, like you know, like sometimes I'd get upset, like we manage to kind of counter uh counter our reactions in that sense. We communicate extremely well together. And yeah, I I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I'm not Nora said that because like it's true, like you know, Lebanese, she's she's the business side of things. There's no time where I kind of stress and I'm like, but Nora, how are we gonna do that? She's like, halas, we're gonna do it, trust me. Or like I need to go there and do this and do that. She's like, We'll find the funds, trust me. Like, she has that kind of yes.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's the resilience of the Lebanese always comes here, you know, like we always find solution, there's always a way out, there's always a way to figure things out.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. I think it's like, yes, exactly, the grit and the resilience. And can you tell us super briefly how was um you know building a brand and becoming a mother at the same time? I have a lot of young entrepreneur mothers in my audience as well in the region, and I think they would be interested to know and uh that you dived in, you chose to dive in for that challenge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, honestly, I'm not gonna say that it's easy because it's not, but I think uh passion and drive played a huge role. Uh having a business partner, I don't think I could have done this alone. Actually, I'm sure I could not have done this without Amina. She was a major pillar in making the open crate and making this company, you know, grow and be where it is today. Um I think at the beginning the challenge was because all of it was new, to be honest. Like it was I'm being a mother for the first time, I'm being an entrepreneur and a business owner for the first time. So it's a lot of new things and a lot of learning as it goes. So I had to kind of get a leap of faith and see where that goes. But the more time has passed, I think balance was like try to find being very organized, find the balance between my time, having again I repeat that, but having a business partner really kind of helped because at times where I couldn't kind of take on more, you know, you have that support and someone that can come and like take on for you. Um, and also having a a partner like my husband being supportive of us, uh, always being like here and listening also kind of helped to kind of continue and persevere when there are days you feel like I can't, I don't know if I can go through another day like this. Um, so I think it's a mix of all of you that made this work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I think it's amazing. It's so, so inspiring, to be honest. The story of both of you and the story of the open crate. I want to dive briefly into uh your kind of alter egos as fashion icons as well, because I think art and fashion sort of come very much intertwined. And not only are you known for being kind of like these avant-garde young women who started a platform that you know promotes and champions Arab heritage and art and archiving, but also you're known as being very stylish, very involved in in kind of like art throughout the fashion world. So I within my research I've found. So I mean, how important is it for you to kind of just always have a presence at all of these art world events? It can be a lot, it is a big commitment, you know.
SPEAKER_02:And so, and and what are your thoughts on on we we see more and more like there's that all of this, whether it's like fashion, wellness, lifestyle, architecture, it's all part of the same creative rhythm, and how you live influences how you see, kind of, and um it all shapes your sensitivity to beauty and detail. So you can't love art and then not care about you know the rest. It's kind of it kind of goes together. And traveling allows us to recharge creatively and and connect with global communities. It's super important for us to go to Art Basel, uh to go to the Venice Biennale, to go to uh New York for the Armory or Freeze. Um, it it this is what feeds directly back into our work. Um, and we don't separate life from art in our life. Like you go to Nora's house, it's like there's design everywhere, art works on the walls, and and the open crate is just an extension of how we live and observe the world somehow. Um and yeah, there is like even the open crate as a digital platform, because we keep on saying it archives art, but it just doesn't only archive art. Like our clients are watch collector, they are jewelry collectors, they are um um sometimes pen collectors. You'd be surprised. We we catalogued a collection of 1,000 pen or like fashion, also people, women who want to document all their jewelry and their and their bags. So it's just like it's it's a world, it's a lot, it's it's like a world of influences. I don't that that's my take on it. I don't know. No, but Nora is definitely the fashion guru, by the way.
SPEAKER_01:No, but I love I love what you just said because I think this is such an important point. And it does get lost uh in in translation that it isn't just art collections, it is collections of objects, many different things. And and like you said, I mean, I think these worlds are intertwined, but Snora, you can touch more on this. Like, I don't think you can separate at this point, especially with the digitization of everything, art from fashion, from high jewelry, etc. I think we're looking at everything in one larger pool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I think I would just add that, you know, it becomes part of it's part of like our DNA today today. Like the fact that you know, you have like this aesthetic kind of um affinity, I would say. Um it then it transcends into all of these. So it transcends, of course, into art and to design, into the way you dress, into the way, you know, the the jewelry, the the way you travel. So this just comes part of a very kind of seamless uh way for us for us and for everyone today that's part of these industries. So they're all kind of yeah, intertwined. Uh I I like that word and I totally agree. And you can also see, you know, like a lot of brands are kind of shifting now. Like the art world has always had that, you know, kind of affinity. You would always see like people being so well, like other than knowing the art world, but being also well dressed. But you could also see the brands and the fashion industry trying to dwell more into the art world. Uh, there's a lot of more collaborations taking place. There's a lot of more brands that are trying to bring artists to create some. So it's like becoming a one kind of language between all of these worlds, and it's it's interesting and it does very well to us, like through the open.
SPEAKER_02:That what I remember when I was studying modern contemporary art at Christie's, and you know, you can see art and science, art and philosophy, art and politics, like it influences such a wide spectrum of of our daily life. Like today, you can you can you can have like uh you know some ministries that want to infuse art and culture within their department to to activate a soft power that tells much more about your culture than a book or a quick conversation, you know.
SPEAKER_00:It's just like such and it's even the language that we're teaching, like at now the first thing that a kid would do is is paint, and that's his first kind of expression. And it's so interesting to see that it starts from such small, you know, like from since we're like very young, and then it just grows into being, like you said, through everything that you do, you have an impact, the art is impacted in it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think I honestly that's 100% true. And and one of my, I mean, my last question actually for both of you, and then I'll and then we'll have one more, is what is your vision for the open crate, of course, in the coming years? I think you're positioned in a very, very favorable place at the moment, um, specifically with kind of everything going on in the Arab art world, as well as South Asia, et cetera. But I'd love to know what your vision is for the platform. I see on social media you have a very curated account. It is very exclusive. The individuals who follow you are very specific, niche. So I'm interested to know what's next.
SPEAKER_02:I guess it's to document as many collections around the world as possible. We've extended our reach to Europe and the US. Uh, we have clients in in um Miami, New York, London, Geneva, Paris, and we're super excited about that. It shows that we're really filling a gap where collectors more than ever need to um understand what they own because this is how um, you know, this is how you tell uh it's like a second life for your collection, you know. You you you buy it and you build it, and then then you document it. You kind of have you uh you understand to have a bird view uh on it, and but also like how am I gonna divide it between my kids? How uh what how do I need to edit my collection? Do I need to loan? How can I participate more actively into the dialogue of this collection? Because a collection always, always outlives you. And um, sadly, and auction houses use that a lot, like you know, there's only three situations where people start thinking smartly about their collection. It's debt, death, and divorce. And we don't need to reach those times of emergency where you can't make a smart decision because you're all like, you know, you're emotional, you know. It's better to kind of like be prepared and treat it as like people treat their real estate investment, their stocks, their crypto, whatever it is, they have such a wide structure around it. No one would tell you, like, oh, I don't know what my portfolio is made of. If you collect that would be like, uh, I don't remember the name of this artist, but I remember I bought it in New York. Like you can treat it like in such um uh like an important way. Um, so just to answer to you to that, so yeah, collecting as many collections around the world as possible. I would love to do something in Latin America to discover more artists from that region, which I find uh extremely uh creative and colorful. Uh but uh uh on my on my like I'm I'm I'm kind of the tech-obsessed person in that uh duo between me and Nora. And I want to launch something called the Open Create Lab. It's gonna be like kind of our RD arm focused on future forward formats, um, thinking like digital certificates, AI powered provenance, cultural data intelligence, like kind of like giving even diving even deeper about how technology can uh preserve uh art history uh um in 100 years from now. So that this is what what I really want to invest in, and and I'll let Nora tell you more about our cultural uh consultancy kind of uh landscape.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the I so yeah, so I mean uh yeah, exactly. Like I think the hopefully we'll get to collect as many collections as possible. Like this has always been like the vision since the start. And you know, we also have a um an kind of an advisory arm as well. So I think it's very important for us to keep discovering new artists, to kind of um learn about you know more uh emerging artists and kind of introduce some of them to our clients uh and get get get get get them to have that more. And um there's also like an art consultancy where we've sometimes do cultural programs to uh to some um to some players in the art market. So, for example, we had done a cultural program with an artist called Minchanso de Cotis and his wife Claudia when they came here, and we've kind of shown them a bit of the inter inner like cultural dynamics in the region and in the UAE. So kind of do more of that. Um so there's so many this this there's so many opportunities and so many things to continue to explore, and I really hope we continue doing that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think one of my to to finish on that, like you know, we're a team of of five women, um, or all from the Arab world. Like we're kind of scattered around the world, the the MENA region. Like we have one in Morocco, one in Amman, one in Lebanon, two of us in Dubai. Um they're remote, and but we're kind of like training them as becoming the next art specialist. It's not like we have universities in the Arab world that kind of train you to do that. So I, me and Nora, we pour our heart and and and we try to like um uh communicate everything that we've learned so far to those young girls who, you know, studied in Boston or studied in New York, studied maybe in Lebanon. They had no idea who were like even like the top five artists in the region, and now they have such an extensive knowledge about art in general, like whether Middle Eastern or Western, we train them as to how to handle an object, how to catalog, how to talk about it, how to contextualize it, how to price it, how to evaluate an artwork, a watch, and I another item. So we're very proud that we're kind of like educating, like forming, we're training the next generation of art specialists as well through our platform that we created. So we're super proud and we want to continue doing this. Every single human being that comes and works with the open crate will leave the open crate with more knowledge about art history than when they started. And for us, it's also super important.
SPEAKER_01:That's fun, that's honestly fantastic. And I really think that both of you are are really gonna have a huge impact on kind of the educational aspect of just making sure that Arab art is not only documented or archived, like you said, but that people learn more and maintain that curiosity. So I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. My last question for all of my guests is since this is the curation podcast, I would love for you to share two to three things in your life that are curated by Nora and Amina that you consider are super effective tools for your success. And it can be anything from like a morning routine, a habit, a coffee, a workout, whatever it is, just like three top of mind things that you can't live without.
SPEAKER_02:I think as a highly caffeinated person. So yeah, I'm coffee, I'm a coffee snob, but I wake up, I I uh recently enrolled into something called the Hoffman Process, their online program. And I think it's it brought me back to meditation and the importance of neuroelasticity into managing my emotion as an entrepreneur. So I wake up, I meditate for 10 to 15 minutes. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself meditating for 45 minutes. It helped me a lot, but it then it kind of became a chore. So I'm back to it. Uh, I go for a walk, I grab my favorite coffee at my favorite place, uh, super cold shower now, and and then I start my work. But this is like, and and at least once a day I go to the gym. Like I need to like ex I need to externalize all that energy and all those emotions that I go through.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I mean I think that's a fire morning routine. And do you mind sharing your favorite coffee or or do we want to not share?
SPEAKER_02:Like, okay, okay, I'll share. Listen, I'm currently having this podcast in Parish, which is like uh my second city, uh, I'm between Paris and Dubai. And I love my coffee uh called Dreaming Man. Uh, it's a Japanese uh coffee shop that opened in Paris like a few years ago, and it's just like a delicious uh coffee beans that I go to.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean I think everyone wrote that down, so that's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for that. Anoura.
SPEAKER_00:I think yeah, very similar. So I I think as soon as I wake up, I'm now enjoying. I never used to have like a morning skincare care routine, and I've been doing this for a year now, and it's kind of helped me start my day. I feel like I've already kind of established and accomplished something good for myself. So I'm always starting with that, and then I have old school coffee. I have two espresso. I need to have them between 7 and 9 a.m. Or it's impossible to start my day. And then working out has been extremely important. But I think also working out in terms of I've been it's been a few months now that I'm trying to take on the new sports, and I feel like that also has been helping in terms of like I've taken on tennis and martial arts, and so just not that only Pilates kind of thing, and that's been a very nice new uh new opening to be honest.
SPEAKER_02:And I guess just to finish on that, it's like we put so much pressure on our shoulder to always be like productive and efficient, and you know, and I just turned 36 and I learned to also and like uh listen to my nervous system. And Nora told me that as well. Like, when you want a break, you just take a break. Because in order to be creative, in order to create spray space in your in your brain, if you keep on pushing and pushing and and trying to overachieve all the time, you kind of like break out of your own flow. So if you want to take a day, walk around, people watch, just do nothing, have a bath, read a book, it's gonna like the return on investment on that is is much more important than just pushing the boundaries of your energy at all times.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. Thank you both so much. I mean, I think I always love this question because it just kind of helps you understand exactly why people are successful. It tells you so much. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being on the curation podcast. And I can't wait for this episode to be out for everyone to learn more about both of you and your incredible business, the open crate.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. That was very fun, and thank you so much for giving us this platform.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Curation Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive with Amina De Bisch and Nora Monsour of the Open Crate. What I love about their work is how it blends tradition innovation and ensuring that our region's stories from private collections to cultural legacies are preserved and elevated on a global stage. If you'd like to learn more about the Open Crate or follow their journey, I'll be linking their platforms in the episode notes. And as always, if you enjoyed this conversation, please share it, leave a review, and stay tuned for more curated voices from across art, fashion, and culture. Thank you for listening.