Maria Lind has been the Director of the Tensta Konsthall since 2011 and is the Artistic Director for the 11th Gwangju Biennale 2016. She was the director of the graduate programme at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, from 2008–10. Before that, she was the director of lASPIS in Stockholm (2005–07) and the director of the Munich Kunstverein (2002–04). Previously she was the curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (from 1997–2001) and in 1998 co-curated Manifesta 2, Europe’s nomadic biennial of contemporary art. Responsible for the ‘Moderna Museet Projekt', Lind worked with artists on a series of 29 commissions that took place in a temporary project-space, or within or beyond the Museum in Stockholm. She is currently a professor of research at the Art Academy in Oslo. She is the co-editor of the following books: Curating with Light Luggage (2005) and Collected Newsletter; Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (2007); European Cultural Policies 2015; The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (2008); Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios (2012); Performing the Curatorial: With and Beyond Art (2012) and Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe (2015), all with Sternberg Press. She edited Abstraction as part of MIT’s and Whitechapel Gallery’s series ‘Documents on Contemporary Art’. In 2010 a selection of Maria Lind’s essays, Selected Maria Lind Writing, spanning from 1997–2010, was published by Sternberg Press, edited by Brian Kuan Wood. Lind won the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2009 and was a board member of IKT from 2006–2011.
Visitors 2015
Margarida Mendes is a researcher, curator and educator. In 2009 she founded the project space The Barber Shop in Lisbon, where she hosts a programme of seminars and residencies dedicated to artistic and philosophical research. Exploring the overlap between cybernetics, philosophy, sciences and experimental film, her personal research investigates the dynamic transformations of materialism and their impact on societal structures and cultural production. She has curated projects in various institutions, among them the Flat Time House, London; KIM? Contemporary Art Center in Riga; CAC Vilnius; Spike Island Centre of Contemporary Art & Design in Bristol; 98 Weeks in Beirut; or Museu de Serralves in Porto. Mendes holds an MA in Aural and Visual Culture from Goldsmiths College of London, and in 2013 she was part of the Synapse Curatorial Research Group included in the 'Anthropocene Project' at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, publishing in the volume Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray, edited by MIT Press (Cambridge, MA). Mendes will be accompanying Maria Lind on her research in Oslo in December 2015 as part of OCA's International Visitor Programme.
Thomas J. Lax was appointed Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art in 2014. For the previous seven years, he worked at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where he organised over a dozen exhibitions as well as numerous screenings, performances and public programs. Lax is a faculty member at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts; on the Advisory Committee Vera List Center for Arts and Politics; on the Arts Advisory Committee of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; a member of the Catalyst Circle at The Laundromat Project; and on the Advisory Board of Recess. He received his BA from Brown University in Africana Studies and Art/Semiotics, and an MA in Modern Art from Columbia University. In 2015, Lax was awarded the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement.
Chantal Pontbriand is a contemporary art curator and critic whose work is based on the exploration of questions of globalisation and artistic heterogeneity. She has curated numerous international contemporary art events: exhibitions, international festivals and international conferences, mainly in photography, video, performance, dance and multimedia installation. She was a founder of PARACHUTE contemporary art magazine in 1975 and acted as publisher/editor until 2007, publishing 125 issues. After curating several major performance events and festivals, she co-founded FIND (Festival International de Nouvelle Danse), in Montreal and was president and director from 1982–2003. She was appointed Head of Exhibition Research and Development at Tate Modern in London in 2010 and founded PONTBRIAND W.O.R.K.S. [We_Others and Myself_Research_ Knowledge_Systems] in 2012. In 2015, she was appointed CEO-Director of MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, and curator and advisor of Demo-Graphics 1 (Greater Toronto Area, May-July 2017). In 2013, she received the Governor General of Canada Award for an Outstanding Contribution in the Visual and Media Arts, in 2014, an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia University, Montreal, and the distinction of Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France (Officer of the Arts and Letters Order of France). Most recent exhibitions include: ‘I See Words, I Hear Voices, Dora Garcia’, The Power Plant, Toronto; ‘Mark Lewis Above and Below’, Le Bal, Paris, 2015; ‘PER/FORM: How To Do Things with[out] Words’, CA2M, Madrid; ‘The Yvonne Rainer Project’, Jeu de Paume, Centre d’art de la Ferme du Buisson, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; ‘Photography Performs: The Body as the Archive’, Centre de photographie d’Île-de-France (CPIF); co-curated with Agency, ‘Dora Garcia, Of Crimes and Dreams’, Darling Foundry, Montreal, 2014; ‘Higher Powers Command’, Lhoist Collection, 2010; ‘HF|RG [Harun Farocki | Rodney Graham]’, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2009. Recent publications include: Mutations, Perspectives on Photography, Steidl/Paris Photo, 2011; The Contemporary, The Common: Art in A Globalizing World, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2013; PER/FORM: How To Do Things with[out] Words, CA2M/Sternberg Press, Madrid/Berlin, 2014; PARACHUTE : The Anthology, JRP/Ringier, Zurich, 2012–15 (4 Volumes).
Sudarshan Shetty is an artist and the appointed artistic director and curator of the third edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2016. He completed his BFA in painting from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai in 1985. Moving from a painting concentration to installation early on in his career, Shetty explores the fundamental ontological challenges presented by our immersion in a world of objects. His installations are developed around a rigorous grammar of materials, mechanical exposure, and unlikely juxtapositions of things that may belong to culturally distinct spheres. Moreover, Shetty's object language eschews narrative as well as established symbolism. He has exhibited widely in India and around the world.
His recent shows include 'Mimic Momento', Galerie Daniel Templon, Brussels, 2015; 'Constructs Constructions', curated by Roobina Karode, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2015; 'A Passage', Staatliche Museum, Schwerin, Germany, 2015; 'every broken moment, piece by piece', GALLERYSKE, New Delhi, 2014; 'The pieces earth took away', Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, 2012; 'Critical Mass', Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2012; 'Indian Highway', Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2012; 'The Matters Within: New Contemporary Art of India, curated by Betti-Sue Hertz, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2011; 'Paris-Delhi-Bombay', Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011; 'Sympathy for the Devil', curated by Walter Vanhaerents and Pierre-Olivier Rollin, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels, 2011; 'India Inclusive', World Economic Forum, Davos, 2011; 'Contemplating the Void', curated by Nancy Spector, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010; Vancouver Biennale, 2009. Sudarshan Shetty was also a participating artist in the inaugural edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale curated by Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu in 2012.
Niels Van Tomme is a curator and writer working on the intersections of contemporary culture, politics, and aesthetics. Currently associated with the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore, he is the appointed curator of the 7th Bucharest Biennale, 2016. His exhibitions and public programs are shown at venues such as The Kitchen, New York, NY, USA; Värmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA, USA; Gallery 400, Chicago, IL, USA and Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany. His curatorial endeavors have received grant awards from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Lambent Foundation and The Nathan Cummings Foundation, as well as critical press in publications such as Afterall, Artforum, Art in America, Afterimage, and The Wall Street Journal. Van Tomme is a Contributing Editor at Art Papers magazine, while his writings in a wide variety of publications explore contemporary art, literature, and music in relationship to broader cultural developments. His books include Where Do We Migrate To? (2011), Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen (2014), and Aesthetic Justice: Intersecting Artistic and Moral Perspectives (2015), co-edited with Pascal Gielen.
Pooja Sood is a founding member and Director of Khoj International Artists’ Association which is an autonomous, not for profit society committed to experimentation and exchange in the visual arts in India. Under her stewardship, Khoj has grown from an annual event in 1997 to a small but vibrant institution which plays a central role in the development of experimental, interdisciplinary and critical contemporary art practice in India. As Director of Khoj, she has worked actively to build a robust network of experimental spaces across south Asia resulting in the South Asian Network for the Arts (SANA). Pooja Sood’s contribution has been in the field of curating alternative contemporary art practices in India as well as exploring different models of collaboration and institution building in India and South Asia.
Amongst other projects, she was Artistic Director and curator of ’48C. Public Art. Ecology’, the first public art project which commissioned 25 art projects by renowned Indian and international artist across ten public sites in New Delhi. Since 2009 she has been the Director of of ArThinkSouthAsia (ATSA) which is an arts management programme for young cultural leaders in south Asia. She has served on several international juries, most recently being the IAPA award of the Institute of Public Art, Shanghai (2014), the APB Signature prize hosted by the Singapore Art Museum (2014–15) and the Korean Art prize, Seoul (2013).
Pooja Sood has spoken and participated in various forums on Indian contemporary art, art management and South Asian art in India and abroad and is the editor of the SANA (South Asian Network for the Arts) publication, 2014, The Khoj Book 1997-2007 contemporary art practice in India, published by Harper Collins, 2010, Video Art in India, 2003 and is currently working on a book on the project ’48C. Public Art. Ecology’. She is a Chevening scholar on the Clore Leadership Programme, UK (2009-2011).
Li Zhenhu is a curator and artist. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, as well as for The Prix Pictet in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition `Digital Revolution´ (2014) in London, UK. Zhenhua has edited several artists' publications, including Yan Lei: What I Like to Do (Documenta, 2012), Hu Jieming: One Hundred Years in One Minute (2010), Feng Mengbo: Journey to the West (2010) and Yang Fudong: Dawn Mist, Separation Faith (2009). A collection of his art reviews has been published under the title Text in 2013.
Marianne Burki, lic.phil.I, studied History of Art and Architecture at University of Bern; practical studies at New York Film Academy (1996); Culture Management at Stapferhaus Lenzburg, Switzerland(2002); and CAS Change Management, Zürich University of applied sciences - ZAHW (2013). After having worked as a freelance journalist in the period (1982–90) and holding various lectureships for History of Art and Architecture (1989–2001), she was appointed Project Leader of the Catalogue raisonné Paul Klee. From 1999 to 2005 she was the director and curator of Kunsthaus Langenthal. She has been Head of Visual Arts department at the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia since November 2005, and as such since 2012 responsible for the Swiss Pavilion at the Art and the Architecture Biennale in Venice, including the recent conception of a funding system for design. Burki is also responsible for the specific funding system for photography, including photobooks, collaboration with magazines and support of launching a new projects for young photographers. In 2002 she produced the film Mariann Grunder. Bildhauerin, that was screened on Swiss Television and at the Solothurn Film Festival 2003. Burki has published texts about Media Art and the Viewer in NZZ and Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Tim Goossens earned an MA in art history at the KULeuven and Sorbonne (Paris) and master cum laude in Museology at the Ecole du Louvre. He worked as an assistant-curator at MoMA PS1 in New York until 2010. During his tenure at the museum he collaborated -amongst many other shows- on 'Greater New York 2010', a Kenneth Anger retrospective and co-founded the Saturday Sessions performance series. As an independent curator some of Goossens projects include a group exhibition at Nara Roesler in Brazil with Joan Jonas, David Wojnarowicz and Marcos Chavez; an official side project for the Berlin Biennial, a Mary Beth Edelson solo exhibition. He also co-curated the first large scale public sound exhibition in India with work from Yoko Ono and Uri Aran. Tim Goossens is currently working as a curator at The Clocktower Gallery, one of the oldest non-profit art spaces in the US, where he has worked with Patti Smith, Antony Hegarty, Nomi Ruiz, Nancy Holt and Joan Jonas. Since 2014 he has been a professor at the Sotheby's Institute of Art.