2019 Speakers

Anita Dube was the curator of the 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India. Dube completed her BA (History) from Delhi University in 1979 and her MVA (Art Criticism) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in 1982. As a member of Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, she wrote the manifesto of the seminal exhibition ‘Questions and Dialogue’ in 1987, and has since been producing critical, politically-driven artwork across media. Dube is the co-founder and board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association, and has contributed texts to many publications on contemporary art.

Anita Dube’s select solo exhibitions include ‘Yours Disparately’ (Nature Morte, New Delhi, 2014), ‘Chance Pieces’ (Nature Morte, Berlin, 2013), ‘Eye, etc.’ (Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai, 2013), ‘Babel’ (Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris, 2011), and ‘Phantoms of Liberty’ (Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, 2007). She has been represented in various national and international biennales and festivals, such as the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, Garage Center, Russia, 2009), Yokohama Triennale (Japan, 2001) and the 7th Havana Biennial (Cuba, 2000). Dube has shown widely nationally and internationally in large-scale group exhibitions, including ‘Part Narratives’ (Bikaner House, Delhi 2017), ‘After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/ 1997’ (Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2015), ‘Difficult Loves-7 Contemporaries’ (Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2013), First Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India, 2012), and ‘ARS 01’ (Kiasma, Helsinki 2001). Dube lives and works in Greater Noida, India.

Devika Singh is Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. Her work focuses on modern and contemporary art and architecture in South Asia and the global history of modernism. She was previously Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies of the University of Cambridge and a fellow at the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art in Paris. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a visiting fellow at the French Academy at Rome, the Freie Universität, Berlin, and the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues, specialised magazines and in the journals Art History, Modern Asian Studies, Journal of Art Historiography and Third Text. In 2017 she guest edited an issue of MARG. Exhibitions curated by Singh include ‘Planetary Planning’ at the Dhaka Art Summit (2018), ‘Gedney in India’ at the CSMVS, Mumbai (2017) and Duke University (2018), and ‘Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan’ at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2019).

Lydia Yee has been Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery since 2015 and most recently curated Is This Tomorrow? (2019), Ulla von Brandenburg: Sweet Feast (2018), Leonor Antunes: The Frisson of the Togetherness (2017) and Mary Heilmann: Looking at Pictures (2016). Before that, Yee was Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, where her exhibitions included Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector (2015), Bauhaus: Art as Life (2013) and Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene (2011). Yee was formerly Senior Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. She is also co-curator of the Frieze Talks programme (2018–present) and was co-curator of British Art Show 8 (2015–16), which toured to Leeds, Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton.

Naomi Beckwith is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and former curator at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Beckwith’s numerous exhibitions include, "The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now” and "30 Seconds off an Inch,” both considering the resonance of black culture across contemporary art internationally, and she has championed rising artists like Rashid Johnson, Keren Cytter, The Propeller Group and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
She has contributed to numerous catalogues and scholarly and periodical publications including Artforum International, Nka, Frieze, Patrkett, and The New York Times. Beckwith has served on many juries including the the jury of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and as a commissioner for the 2021 version of the French Pavillion. She holds an M.A. with Distinction from Courtauld Institute of Art and was a Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum. A multiple grantee, and now trustee, of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Beckwith is a also recipient of the New Leadership award for ArtTable.

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati lives in Kathmandu, Nepal and works at the intersections of visual storytelling, research, pedagogy, and collective action. In 2007, she co-founded photo.circle; an independent artist-led platform that facilitates learning, exhibition making, publishing and a variety of other trans-disciplinary collaborative projects for Nepali visual practitioners. In 2011, she co-founded Nepal Picture Library; a digital archiving initiative that works towards diversifying Nepali socio-cultural and political history. NayanTara is also the co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu, an international festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years. NayanTara has served as the Festival Director for South Asia's premier non-fiction film festival Film Southasia from 2013-2015. She has been a mentor for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass, was awarded the 2020 Jane Lombard Fellowship by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and will be chairing the 2021 World Press Photo Contest Jury.

Nora Razian is Head of Exhibitions at the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai where she has curated solo presentations by Mounira Al Solh, Farah Al Qasimi and Chiharu Shiota, as well as oversaw the Jameel’s 2018 opening programme of exhibitions and publications. Previous roles include Head of Programmes and Exhibitions at the Sursock Museum, Beirut, and Curator of Public Programmes at Tate, London. She has an MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics from Goldsmiths College, London, where she also designed and taught the MA course ‘Critical Pedagogy in Contested Space’ at the Centre for Arts and Learning. She has curated several solo and group exhibitions, including 'I will return, and I will be millions' (2019) as part of Homeworks 8, Beirut Lebanon, Phantom Limb (2019) at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai and Let’s Talk About the Weather: Art and Ecology in a Time of Crisis (2016/2018) at the Sursock Museum, Beirut and the Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou; Maha Maamoun: The Law of Existence (2017), Hrair Sarkissian: Homesick (2017), Ali Cherri: A Taxonomy of Fallacies (2016) and Adelita Husni-Bey: A Wave (2016). She has commissioned works by Claire Pentecost, Marko Peljhan, Ahmet Ogüt, Adrian Lahoud, Joana Hadjitomas & Khalil Joreige, and Monira Al Qadiri.

Razian is co-editor of Elements for a World (Sursock Museum, Beirut), a series of 5 publications featuring specially commissioned texts and visual contributions responding to the current climate crisis through scientific, poetic, political, and speculative contributions, and The Future Citizen Guide (Tate, London), a series of contributions by artist and curators exploring changing notions of citizenship.

Paz Guevara is a curator, researcher and author based in Berlin. Currently, she is collaborating in the long-term project Kanon-Fragen at Haus der Kulturen der Welt - HKW in Berlin, Germany. In this context, she has been one of the curators of the exhibition Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War (2017-2018); and curator of the Afro-Sonic Mapping project by musician and artist Satch Hoyt (2019). Also as researcher, she has contributed to the exhibition Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978, with research on South American artists, museums and networks involved in the Solidarity Movement. Guevara has been co-curator of the Latin American Pavilion at the 55th and 54th Venice Biennial (2013 and 2011), In Other Words at NGBK in Berlin (2012), and co- editor of the homonymous book with guest authors: Sarat Maharaj and Beatriz Sarlo, and curator of Comunidad Ficticia, in Matucana 100, Santiago (2009), among others. She has conducted several workshops and seminars on curating and exhibition histories, and she has written extensively on contemporary artistic practices, most recently, on the works of Beatriz González and Olaf Holzapfel for Documenta 14.

Shaina Anand is a filmmaker and artist who has been working independently in film and video since 2001, and since 2007 as CAMP, a Mumbai-based studio for transdisciplinary media practices, which she co-founded with Ashok Sukumaran. CAMP's provocative work in video and film, electronic media and public art forms over the past decade have shown how deep technical experimentation and artistic form can meet while extracting new qualities and experiences from contemporary life and materials.

Their artistic work has been exhibited widely, including at film venues such as the Flaherty seminar, the BFI London Film Festival, the Viennale and Anthology Film Archives, and in art contexts such as the Biennials of Liverpool, Sharjah, Kochi- Muziris, Gwangju, Taipei, Shanghai and Lahore, the Chennai Photo Biennale and the Chicago Architecture Biennale; New Museum, De Appel, Argos Centre for Audio Visual arts, Tate Modern, MoMA and Ars Electronica, Documenta 13 in Kassel and Kabul, the Kiemena project at Documenta 14, and the 2017 edition of the Skulptur Projekte Münster. From their home base in Chuim village, Mumbai they run the online archives https://Pad.maand https://Indiancine.ma, and the community space R and R, among other activities including their long-running rooftop cinema. Shaina is also founding trustee of The Indian Cinema Foundation and curator of The New Medium (2016-18) at MAMI Festival, Mumbai.

Tarun Nagesh is Curator of Asian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia. He is part of the lead curatorial team of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT), primarily working with artists in South and South East Asia for the 7th, 8th and 9th editions. Tarun also regularly curates exhibitions for QAGOMA, including recent projects Problem-Wisdom: Thai Art in the 1990s; A Fleeting Bloom: Japanese Art from the Collection; KalpaVriksha: Contemporary Indigenous and Vernacular Art of India (as part of APT8); Political Parody in Indonesian Art; and Indo Pop: Contemporary Indonesian Art.

Tarun is actively involved in commissions and acquisitions for the QAGOMA collection and also oversees QAGOMA’s historical Asian Art collection and exhibitions. He is a regular contributor to journals and exhibition publications in Australia, is a state representative of the The Asian Arts Society of Australia, a member of the national Asian Art Provenance Research panel, and was a curatorial fellow of the 2018 Dhaka Art Summit. Prior to joining QAGOMA in 2011 Tarun worked in the commercial sector in Melbourne.

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer based in Vietnam. Her curatorial practice centres on building critically thinking and historically conscious artistic communities, fostering dialogue among countries of the global south. Currently Artistic Director of the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s first purpose-built space for contemporary art, Zoe formerly served as Executive Director and Curator, Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City (2009–2016); Director, International Programs, Long March Project, Beijing (2007–2009); and Assistant Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2001–2007). Her work has been published by Hatje Cantz; ArtReview; Independent Curators International; ArtAsiaPacific; Printed Project; Lalit Kala Akademi; JRP-Ringier; Routledge; and Sternberg Press, among others. Recent exhibitions include Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber - Journey Beyond The Arrow, (2019); Empty Forest: Tuan Andrew Nguyen (2018); Spirit of Friendship and Poetic Amnesia: Phan Thao Nguyen (both 2017); Dislocate: Bui Cong Khanh (2016), Conjuring Capital (2015). Zoe is a member of the Asian Art Council for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in 2015 was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

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.