Dessislava Dimova is a writer and curator. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. She holds an MA in philosophy from CRMEP, Middlesex University, London and in Art History from the Bulgarian Academy of Arts, Sofia. In 2010 she curated 'Thank You for Your Understanding – 2', International Antakya Biennial, Antakya, Turkey. Recent projects include 'In 15 minutes everyone will be in the future. An opera' (18th Week of Contemporary Art, Plovdiv Bulgaria, 2012)and 'Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova, Material Culture: Things in our Hands' (Christine Koenig Gallery, Vienna, 2011). Dessislava Dimova is a founding member of Art Affairs and Documents Foundation, Sofia and founding editor of blistermagazine.com. Her first novel The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in Bulgarian in 2009 (Razvitie, Sofia).
Visitors 2012
Yuko Hasegawa is the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT), Japan. She is also a professor at the Department of Art Science at the Tama Art University in Tokyo. Her recent projects include 'Space for your Future’ (2007) and 'Architectural Environments for Tomorrow’ (2011) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. At the 21st-Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan (where she also served as Founding Artistic Director), she curated 'Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint' (2005). She was also the Artistic Director of the 7th International Istanbul Biennial (2001), co-curator of the 4th Shanghai Biennial (2002), commissioner of Japanese Pavilion of 50th edition of the Venice Biennale (2003), co-curator of the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and artistic advisor for the 12th edition of the Venice Architectural Biennale (2010). She has recently served as curator of the 11th Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2013).
Barbara London founded MoMA's video exhibition and collection programmes, and has guided them over a pioneering career. Her recent activity at MoMA includes 'Looking at Music 3.0', exploring the influence of music on contemporary art practices, focusing on New York in the 1980s and 90s; 'Mirage', an installation by Joan Jonas; 'Looking at Music: Side 2', featuring artists such as Patti Smith, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer and Blondie; 'Automatic Update', with installations by Cory Arcangel, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Paul Pfeiffer and Xu Bing. She was also responsible for 'Through the Weeping Glass' at the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia, USA and a series of web projects such as 'Stir-fry', China; 'InterNyet', Russia and 'dot.jp', Japan. She has also written and lectured widely.
Koyo Kouoh is an independent exhibition maker and cultural producer educated in Banking Administration and Cultural Management in Switzerland and France. She is the founder and artistic director of Raw Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal. Kouoh has served as agent to Carolyn Christov-Barkagiev’s dOCUMENTA (13). She co-curated ‘Les Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine’ in Bamako in 2001 and 2003. Specialising in photography, video and art in the public space, she has curated numerous exhibitions internationally and written on contemporary African art. Besides a sustained theoretical and exhibition program at Raw Material Company, she maintains a dynamic curatorial activity beyond the African borders. Over the past years she has overseen exhibitions, publications and discursive programmes including contemporary artists, thinkers and writers. Recent exhibitions include ‘Hollandaise: a journey into an iconic fabric’, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Raw Material Company (2013); ‘Boulevard du Centenaire Made in China, photography of the Chinese migration to Dakar’, Shanghai Biennial and Raw Material Company (2012) and ‘Chronicle of a Revolt: photographs of a season of protest’, Raw Material Company and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2012). In collaboration with Anne-Marie Bouttiaux and David Adjaye, she curated the contemporary section of ‘GEO-graphics: a map of African art past and present’, an exhibition that celebrated 50 years of African Independence at Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium (2010). She co-curated ‘Make yourself at home’, an exhibition in collaboration with Charlotte Bagger-Brandt for Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Denmark (2010). The project reflected on the notion of hospitality in contemporary art in the context of international migration. Kouoh was associate curator of SUD, Salon Urbain de Douala (2010), a triennial of art in the public space initiated by the contemporary art centre Doual’art in Douala, Cameroon.
RoseLee Goldberg, art historian, critic, curator and author whose book Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present first published in 1979, pioneered the study of performance art. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art (London University), she was director of the Royal College of Art Gallery in London and curator at The Kitchen in New York. In 1990 she organized ‘Six Evenings of Performance’ as part of the exhibition ‘High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Author of Performance: Live Art Since 1960 with Laurie Anderson, she is a frequent contributor to Artforum and other magazines. In 2001-02 Goldberg originated and produced Logic of the Birds, a full length multimedia production by artist Shirin Neshat in collaboration with singer Sussan Deyhim, which premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in 2002 and toured to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and to Artangel in London. RoseLee Goldberg has lectured extensively at The Architectural Association in London, California Institute of the Arts, Yale, Princeton and Tate Modern, and has taught at New York University since 1987.
Mihnea Mircan is the artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, where he has recently curated the exhibitions 'A Slowdown at the Museum' and '1:1. Hans van Houweligen and Jonas Staal'. His forthcoming projects are a project with Jean-Luc Moulène and the group exhibition 'Allegory of the Cave Painting'. From 2005 to 2006 he was curator of Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. At the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, he curated exhibitions such as 'Under Destruction', a series of site-specific interventions, 'Sublime Objects' and surveys of the artists Sean Snyder and Jaan Toomik. Other recent curatorial projects include: ‘History of Art, the’, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, 2010; ‘Since we last spoke about monuments’, Stroom Den Haag, 2008; ‘Low-Budget Monuments’, 52nd Venice Biennial, Romanian Pavilion, Venice, 2007. Mircan has recently contributed texts to monographs of Pavel Buchler and Nina Beier, as well as to magazines such as Mousse and Manifesta Journal.
Esa Nickle joined the Performa team in May 2005 as the Biennial Coordinator of the Performa 05 biennial and has since expanded her role as the line producer of Performa commissions, international tours and special events. During her 16 years working in the field she has managed large scale public art events, art education programs, and curatorial projects for the city agencies such as the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival in London. Since arriving in New York in 1998 Nickle has worked with public art consultant Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, MTA Arts for Transit, managed White Box, a non-profit alternative contemporary arts space in Chelsea and curated several exhibitions and programs on sound art and experimental music. Nickle studied the Sociology of Art at Indiana University and Art History at the City University, London.
Ruba Katrib is the Curator at the SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York. Previously Katrib was the Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami. There she organised the first comprehensive solo museum exhibitions of Cory Arcangel (2010) and Claire Fontaine (2010), and several acclaimed group exhibitions including The Possibility of an Island (2008), Convention (2009), The Reach of Realism (2009), and Modify, as needed (2011). She initiated performance and workshop programs at MOCA and organised the three-day New Methods symposium, which focused on independent artist initiatives throughout Latin America. A follow-up book project is forthcoming. Katrib has contributed texts to a number of publications and written for periodicals such at Artforum, ArtPapers, and Mousse Magazine. Katrib is co-organising an in-depth conference about curatorial practice today, scheduled for the summer of 2012 on the occasion of 20th anniversary of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Elvira Dyangani Ose was recently appointed curator of international art at Tate Modern, London, UK. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in the History of Art and Visual Studies programme at Cornell University, New York, NY, USA. She holds a graduate degree in the Theory and History of Architecture from Universtat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain. She is a founding member of the Laboratory for Oral Resources in Equatorial Guinea, an independent research group on Equatorial Guinea oral tradition studies and also member of the research group Afroeuropeans at the University of León, Spain. As a freelance curator she developed several interdisciplinary projects, focusing on recovering collective memories, interventions in public space or urban ethnography, most significantly, 'Memoria i Desconcert: Art a Guinea Ecuatorial', 'Urban Emotion o Authentic Fiction'. As a specialist in contemporary African art she has been a guest professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and has taken part in lecture cycles addressing African artistic production and contemporary culture. In the last two years she curated an exhibition of contemporary South African artists called 'Olvida quién soy / Erase me from who I am' in collaboration with Tracy Murinik, Khwezi Gule and Gabi Ngcobo and 'Tres scenarios/Three scenarios', both of which took place while she was curator at Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. She will also serve as the curator for the next edition of PICHA, a biennial of photography and video scheduled for the autumn of 2012 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Adam Kleinman is a writer, editor, curator, lecturer, sometime performer, and former dOCUMENTA (13) Agent for Public Programming. He was Curator at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), where he created the interpretative humanities program ‘Access Restricted’. At LMCC, Kleinman developed LentSpace, a cultural venue and garden design by Interboro Partners, which repurposed an entire vacant Manhattan block. There, he curated the exhibitions ‘Avenue of the Americas’ (2010), and ‘Points & Lines’ (2009). Kleinman is also a frequent guest tutor at numerous educational institutions internationally as well as a contributor to multiple exhibition catalogues, monographs, anthologies, and magazines including Art-agenda, Artforum, e-flux journal, frieze, Mousse, Texte zur Kunst, and TheWhite Review. Kleinman is currently Editor-in-Chief & Adjunct Curator at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) where he and the team launched WdW Review, a multi-disciplinary arts, culture & politics journal. In addition to these activities, Kleinman often curates thematic exhibitions at Witte de With and likewise programs symposia and other events at the center.
Jonatan Habib Engqvist is a theorist and curator. Recently appointed curator of the Reykjavik Arts Festival 2012, he was previously employed at Södertörn University (2004-07), the Royal Institute of Fine Art, KKH (2006-08) and as curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2008-09). Currently on sabbatical from Iaspis - The Swedish Arts Grants Committee´s International Programme for Visual Artists, where he is project manager for Visual Art. Engqvist has written for and edited journals like Glänta, Ord&Bild, Motiv, Input and Divan. Co-editor of the book Dharavi: Documenting Informalities (Stockholm 2008 & New Dehli 2009), editor in mischief at tsnoK.se and producer of international programs and exhibitions. Recent free-lance projects include ‘Informal Cities’ at the Prince of Wales Museum, ‘Bombay’ (co-curated with Maria Lantz, Anna Erlandsson, Michelle Masucci, 2009), ‘Meriç Algün Ringborg, The Concise Book of Visa Application Forms’, Gallery Naïve (2010) and the exhibition and publication ‘The Nordic Third World Country? - Icelandic Art in Times of Crises’ at Färgfabriken, Stockholm and Färgfabriken Norr, Östersund (2010). Engqvist is also engaged in the artistic research project ‘Thinking through painting’ (2009-).