Maria Lind is a curator and critic based in Stockholm, where she was born in 1966. She is the director of Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm. 2008-2010 director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. 2005-2007 director of Iaspis in Stockholm. 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein Munchen where she together with a curatorial team ran a programme which involved artists such as Deimantas Narkevicius, Oda Projesi, Annika Eriksson, Bojan Sarcevic, Philippe Parreno and Marion von Osten. From 1997-2001 she was curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and, in 1998, co-curator of Manifesta 2, Europe's biennale of contemporary art. Responsible for 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. Among the artists were Koo Jeong-a, Simon Starling, Jason Dodge, Esra Ersen. There she also curated What if: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design. In 2011 she guest-curated the group exhibition Abstract Possible: The Tamayo Take at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.

 She has contributed widely to newspapers and magazines and to numerous catalogues and other publications. She is the co-editor of the books Curating with Light Luggage and Collected Newsletter (Revolver Archiv fur aktuelle Kunst), Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (Blackdog Publishing), as well as the report European Cultural Policies 2015 (Iaspis and eipcp) and The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press). Among her recent co-edited publications are Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios, Performing the Curatorial: With and Beyond Art, and Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe, all at Sternberg Press. She edited Abstraction as part of MIT’s and Whitechapel Gallery’s series Documents on Contemporary Art. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In the fall of 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press.

Curator

Binna Choi

b. 1966 / Stockholm, Sweden

Binna Choi is director of Casco ?Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Carrying on Casco’s ongoing practice of artistic research and experimentation with a number of artists, her particular focus at Casco has been carrying out an art-institutional practice as a way to build a (micro-)society in tandem with social movements. It involves an engagement to doing and working outside of given formulas, including the development of revolving long-term research projects, a compositional approach to organizing, and exercising organizational forms that look towards the commons and feminist practices. The“Grand Domestic Revolution” (2009?2012), comprising residencies, productions, forums, exhibitions, and publications, is an example of such work at Casco as well as “We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning” and “Japan Syndrome.”

Assistant Curators

Azar Mahmoudian

b. 1981, Tehran

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and researcher based in Tehran. She co-ran a project space for artistic and social events in Tehran (2010-2015), which refrained from remaining under the radar and acted a space for mediation, debate, and conversation. She lectures in criticism and comparative art history at Tehran Art University and is a member of the research committee for the Tehran Biennial. Azar holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was awarded the Chevening Scholarship in 2008.

Assistant Curators

Margarida Mendes

b. 1985, Lisbon

Margarida Mendes is a writer, 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. Margarida 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 in Berlin, with writing in the volume Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray, published by MIT Press (2004)

Assistant Curators

Michelle Wong

b. 1987, Hong Kong

Michelle Wong is a Researcher at Asia Art Archive. Based in Hong Kong, she leads the Archive’s research projects in the city, including the Hong Kong Art History Research Project, organized in collaboration with the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Wong is part of “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art,”a research program funded through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative. Her ongoing research and writing focus on mapping international exchanges in the 1960s, documentation as artistic practice, and independent, artist-led initiatives and art magazines.

Local curatorial associate

Mite-Ugro

Established in 2009, Mite-Ugro is collective supported by the voluntary participation of Gwangju's visual artists and curators. In addition to its permanent personnel, a management committee comprising of external artists is brought on each year by Mite-Ugro to work on annual projects. Each year, this committee supports young artists and carries out an exchange with alternative spaces in Asia. Mite-Ugro also organizes artist & curators talk, film screenings, and education programs for prospectisve promoters and artists. Furthermore, it publishes the cultural art review POST with Space Heem in Busan, and runs an open call for critical reviews with the goal of supporting the local production of criticism. Mite-Ugroalso has facilities such as an underground exhibition space, a community cafe on the ground floor, artist studios, and a guest house.