2018 Speakers

Adam Szymczyk was Artistic Director of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017. He is Curator-at-Large at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
In 1997, he co-founded the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, to then work as Director of Kunsthalle Basel from 2003 to 2014. In 2008, he co-curated with Elena Filipovic the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, When Things Cast No Shadow. He is a Member of the Board of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Member of the Advisory Committee of Kontakt (The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation) in Vienna, where he also holds a seminar Undoing Landscape as guest lecturer at Akademie der bildenden Künste. In 2011, he received the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Foundation in Houston.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, PhD is an independent art curator and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary Berlin and editor-in-chief of SAVVY Journal for critical texts on contemporary African art. He is currently guest professor in curatorial studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He was curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk's documenta 14, and is a guest curator of the 2018 Dak'Art Biennale in Senegal. Recent curatorial projects include: Azin Feizabadi, Once Upon A Time, Once Upon No Time, Galerie Wedding, 2018; That, Around Which the Universe Revolves: On Rhythmanalysis of Memory, Times, Bodies in Space, SAVVY Contemporary, Hebbel am Ufer, Kampnagel.

Selected lectureships and talks at Reykjavik Museum of Art, 2018; Cités des Arts, Paris, 2018; Tensta Konsthall Stockholm, 2017; Bergen Assembly, 2017; University of the Arts London, 2017; Gwangju Biennale, 2016; Pluriversale, Akademie der Kunste der Welt, Köln, 2016.

Erin Gleeson is an independent curator, researcher and writer. Based in Phnom Penh since 2002, her work has focused on knowledge and practices in and related to Southeast Asia. Select exhibitions include On Attachments and Unknowns, SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh (2017), Enter the Stream at the Turn, Satellite Program 8, Jeu de Paume and CAPC, France (2015-2016); 4th Singapore Biennale (2014).

As part of the Asia Cultural Centre Gwangju initiative Exhibition Histories in Asia, she curated and authored the study Displaying Change and Continuity: Exhibition Histories in Cambodia 1945-1979 (2016). She is a guest speaker most recently at the symposiums Flight from the Empire, House of World Cultures, Berlin (2017), SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia from 1980-Today, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017); and Art in Cambodia: An Historical Inquiry, Museum of Modern Art, NY, for which she was a co-organizer (2013). Gleeson co-founded with Vera Mey, FIELDS, a triennial gathering-residency rooted in Cambodia. She was a curator in residence with Villa Vassilief, Paris (2016), Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2015), and received an Artis research grant, Tel Aviv (2014). She is a member of the Prize Council for the Vera List Prize for Art and Politics, and a Juror and Guest Advisor to Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and Rijksacadmie-ACC, Gwangju.

From 2011-2018, she was the co-founding director of SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit exhibition space, reading room and resource center in Phnom Penh.

Jeebesh Bagchi, along with Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, is a member of Raqs Media Collective. Raqs Media Collective enjoys playing a plurality of roles, often appearing as artists, occasionally as curators, and sometimes as philosophical agent provocateurs. In 2000, Raqs Media Collective co-founded the Sarai initiative at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, and the Sarai Reader Series, which they edited until 2013. The collective received the Multitude Art Prize in 2013.

Exhibitions curated by Raqs Media Collective include ‘The Rest of Now’ (Manifesta 7, Bolzano, 2008), Sarai Reader 09 (Gurugram, 2012-13), INSERT2014 (New Delhi, 2014) and most recently ‘Why Not Ask Again’ (Shanghai Biennale 2016-2017).

Their work has been exhibited at Documenta, the Venice, Sao Paulo, Manifesta, Istanbul, Shanghai, Sydney and Taipei Biennales. A retrospective, ‘With an Untimely Calendar’ was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, in 2014-2015. Other solo shows at museums include at the Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston 2012), CA2M (Madrid 2014), MUAC (Mexico City 2015), Tate Exchange (London 2016), Foundacion Proa (Buenos Aires 2015), Laumeier Sculpture Park (St Louis 2016), and the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester 2017). Raqs Media Collective's solo Everything Else Is Ordinary is currently on view at K21 Museum, Dusseldorf.

Kavita Singh is Professor of Art History and is currently the Dean of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she teaches courses on the history of Indian painting, on curating, and on the history and politics of museums. She has published essays on issues of colonial history, repatriation, secularism and religiosity, fraught national identities, and the memorialization of difficult histories as they relate to museums in South Asia and beyond. She has also published essays and monographs on Mughal painting.

Her books include the edited and co-edited volumes New Insights into Sikh Art (Marg, 2003), Influx: Contemporary Art in Asia (Sage, 2013), No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia (co-edited with Saloni Mathur, Routledge, 2014), and Museum Storage and Meaning: Tales from the Crypt (co-edited with Mirjam Brusius, Routledge 2017). Monographs include Museums, Heritage, Culture: Into the Conflict Zone (Amsterdam University of the Arts, 2015) and Real Birds in Imagined Gardens: Mughal Painting Between Persia and Europe (Getty Research Institute, 2016).

She has curated exhibitions at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Devi Art Foundation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the National Museum of India.

Léuli Eshrāghi is a visiting curator (with Freja Carmichael, Lana Lopesi, Tarah Hogue and Sarah Biscarra Dilley) at the Institute of Modern Art, just north of Mianjin, in 2018. He is a curator, artist and Monash University PhD candidate visiting Kulin Nation lands and waters. Léuli hails from the Sāmoan villages of Āpia, Leulumoega, Siʻumu, Salelologa, and other ancestries.

His work centres on ceremonial-political practices, language renewal, and Indigenous futures. Residencies include Sovereign Words (Office of Contemporary Art Norway with Artspace Sydney at the Dhaka Art Summit), Para Site Hong Kong, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and University of British Columbia - Okanagan. He serves on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (Canada), editorial advisory committee for un Magazine, and the Pacific advisory group to Melbourne Museum.

Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu is a curator and writer based in Berlin, Istanbul and Graz. After her guest professorship for curatorial theory and praxis in Nuremberg Fine Arts Academy, she is currently one of the curators for Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz. In Istanbul she acted as the director/curator of YAMA screen between 2015-16. She was curatorial and public program advisor for Gülsün Karamustafa's retrospective 'Chronographia' at Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart (Berlin).

Among recent exhibitions are 'Brief Flashes Against A World (Languages of the Future), Kunsthal ExtraCity, Antwerp (2017); 'The Finger That Shows The Moon Never Moons’, Dan Gunn, Berlin (2017); 'Future Queer', the 20th year anniversary exhibition for Kaos GL, ARK Kultur Istanbul (2016). In the past, she organized/coordinated programs and events as a Goethe Institute fellow at Maybe Education and Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13). She was the artistic director of the festival Sofia Contemporary 2013, 'Near, Closer, Together: Exercises for a Common Ground’ and curated programs for 10th, 13th and 14th Istanbul Biennials.

Durmuşoğlu lectured in institutions such as Central European University (Budapest), Grand Union (Birmingham), Dhaka Art Summit’ 16, Tensta Konsthall (Stockholm), Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (Sao Paulo), 98weeks (Beirut), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Akademie der Bildende Kuenste (Vienna). She has contributed to print and online publications such as Zeit Online, Frieze Online, WdW Review and Art Agenda. She is also among the co-founders of Altyazi Monthly Cinema Magazine in Istanbul.

Prasad Shetty & Rupali Gupte are urbanists based in Mumbai and teach at the School of Environment and Architecture which they co-founded as an experimental academic space for architecture and urbanism. In 2003, they co-founded an urban research network, CRIT.

Rupali and Prasad are architects and specialise in urban design and urban management respectively. Some of their works include Multifarious Nows (an art installation for Manifesta 7, Bolzano - 2007); Studies of Housing Types in Mumbai (for the Urban Age initiative of London School of Economics - 2007), Being Nicely Messy - a proposition for the future of Urban Mobility (for Audi Urban Future Initiatives, Istanbul - 2012); Gurgaon Glossaries - a methodology to read cities (for Sarai 09 Delhi - 2013, Mumbai Art Room and the Sao Paolo Architecture Biennale - 2014); Transactional Objects (an installation for the 56th Venice Art Biennale - 2015), R and R: a library and community centre built in a rehabilitation colony in Mankhurd in collaboration with CAMP and Khanabadhosh (2016), Spatial design for the Shanghai Biennale (2016); Systems and Madness, (an installation at the Seoul Architecture Biennale 2017) When is Space? (curation of an architectural exhibition at Jawahar Kala Kendral, Jaipur - 2018).

Sabih Ahmed is a Researcher at Asia Art Archive based in New Delhi. He conceptualises and leads research initiatives on modern and contemporary art, has led projects digitising artist archives and creating digital bibliographies of art across multiple languages, and has organised colloquia and seminars around archiving and educational resources. Ahmed has been a Visiting Faculty at School of Culture and Creative Expression, Ambedkar University, Delhi.

His recent writings have been published by Mousse Publications, The Whitworth, and Oncurating. He was a member of the Curatorial Collegiate of the 11th Shanghai Biennale curated by Raqs Media Collective.

Shumon Basar is a writer, thinker and cultural critic. He is co-author of The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist. His edited books include Translated By, Cities from Zero, The World of Madelon Vriesendorp, With/Without, Did Someone Say Participate? and Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews Volume 2.

He is Commissioner of the Global Art Forum in Dubai; Editor-at-large of Tank magazine and Contributing Editor at Bidoun magazine; Director of the Format program at the AA School, London; a member of Fondazione Prada’s “Thought Council,” Milan; and part of Art Jameel’s Curatorial Council.

Natasha Ginwala is a curator and writer. She is Associate Curator at Gropius Bau, Berlin and artistic director of COLOMBOSCOPE, Colombo. Ginwala has curated Contour Biennale 8, “Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium” and was part of the curatorial team of documenta14, 2017. Other recent projects include “Arrival, Incision. Indian Modernism as Peripatetic Itinerary” in the framework of “Hello World. Revising a Collection” at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2018; “Riots: Slow Cancellation of the Future” at ifa Gallery Berlin and Stuttgart, 2018; “My East is Your West” at the 56th Venice Biennale, 2015; and “Corruption: Everybody Knows…” with e-flux, New York, 2015. Ginwala was a member of the artistic team for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2014, and co-curated “The Museum of Rhythm” at Taipei Biennial 2012 and at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, 2016–2017. From 2013–2015, in collaboration with Vivian Ziherl, she led the multi-part curatorial project “Landings” presented at various partner organizations. Ginwala writes on contemporary art and visual culture in various periodicals and has contributed to numerous publications. She is a recipient of the 2018 visual arts research grant from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.