VILLA ROMANA - HOME
VILLA ROMANA - HOME

Jury

2022

Antonia Alampi is a curator, researcher, writer, and director of the new Schöpflin Foundation-funded Spore Initiative, which will open in Berlin in 2021, and co-curator of the Sonsbeek Quadrennial. Previously, she was artistic co-director of SAVVY Contemporary from 2016. Between 2017 and mid-2019, she was curator of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp, where she realized a three-year program on European citizenship. In 2016, together with Iliana Fokianaki, she initiated the research project Future Climates, which explored how economic flows shape and determine the work of small initiatives in contexts with weak public infrastructure for arts and culture. From 2012 to 2015, she was curator of the Beirut Exhibition House in Cairo. There she conceived and directed the educational project The Imaginary School Program (2014 /2015). Between 2009 and 2011 she co-founded the art initiative Opera Rebis and worked for Studio Stefania Miscetti (Rome), Manifesta 7 (South Tyrol) and the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento.

Hiwa K, an artist born in 1975 in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, reflects on his own migration history in his video works and installations, transferring it into poetically and narratively multilayered works. The question of geographical location, the search for orientation, or becoming aware of oneself plays a leading role in many of his works. He continuously criticizes the art education system and the professionalization of art practice as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension. Hiwa K has participated in various group exhibitions such as Manifesta 7, Trento (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the Edgware Road Project at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta 14, Kassel /Athens (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (2018), and Van Every /Smith Galleries in North Carolina, USA. In 2016 Hiwa K received the Arnold Bode Prize and the Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award and had a solo exhibition at KW, Berlin (2017).

2020

Peggy Buth, born in Berlin in 1971, has been Professor of Media Art at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts since winter semester 2016 /17. In 2002, she graduated there in photography and fine arts and was subsequently a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, Netherlands (2003 - 2005). Her work has been presented internationally, including Exhibition Research Centre, John Moores University, Liverpool, Centre d'art contemporain, Parc Saint Léger, France, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania, Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt /AM, K21, Düsseldorf, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Bétonsalon, Paris, La Synagogue de Delme, France, Brussels Biennial, Belgium. In 2018, she participated in the Ruhr Triennial with the 3-channel video installation Vom Nutzen der Angst - The Politics of Selection. Previously, this work was shown in a reduced version at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. Peggy Buth herself says about her work: ""My artistic practice is conceptual and process-related, often connected with longer-term research. My practice is interdisciplinary as well as intermedial. (...) In one of my new works Politics of Selection - Vom Nutzen der Angst (since 2014) I explore the connection between the construction of identity, racial prejudice, media, economics and the capitalist appropriation of space."

Anselm Franke, born 1978, is an author, art critic, curator and has been head of the Visual Arts, Film, Digital Media department at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin since 2013. He initiated and realised exhibitions there in various collaborations such as Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, ca. 1930 (2018, with Tom Holert), Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and Cold War (2017 /2018, with Nida Ghouse, Paz Guevara, Antonia Majaca), 2 or 3 Tigers (2017, with Hyunjin Kim), Nervous Systems (2016, with Tactical Technology Collective, Stephanie Hankey, Marek Tuszynski ), Ape Culture (2015, with Hila Peleg), Forensis (2014, with Forensic Architecture), The Whole Earth (with Diedrich Diederichsen) and After Year Zero (both 2013). Currently, the HKW is showing the final exhibition of the international project Love and Ethnology. The History of Sensibility after Hubert Fichte (curated with Diedrich Diederichsen). From 2001 to 2006 Anselm Franke was exhibition director of Kunst-Werke - KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, from 2006 to 2010 director of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp, 2008 co-curator of Manifesta 7 in Trentino-Alto Adige, 2008 co-curator of the 1st Brussels Biennial, 2012 curator of the Taipei Biennial and 2014 of the Shanghai Biennial. In 2005, together with Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, he founded the Forum Expanded of the Berlin International Film Festival. Anselm Franke received his PhD from Goldsmiths College, London.

Susan Philipsz (* 1965 in Glasgow) is a Scottish sound artist who lives and works in Berlin. She studied sculpture at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee from 1989 to 1993 and graduated from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. She is one of the most important international sound artists of the present day and was awarded the Turner Prize in 2010. As a trained sculptor, she explores the boundaries between sculpture and sound, between materiality and immateriality. One of her main focuses is the artistic exploration of themes such as transience and memory, as well as the momentous war experiences of the 20th century. Since April 2019, Susan Philipsz has been a visiting professor - initially for two semesters - at the Dresden Art Academy. Philipsz has been a participant in the Sydney Biennale (2008), documenta 13 (2012) and Manifesta 10 in St Petersburg (2014), among others. In the same year, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to British Art. In 2015, she received the Global Fine Art Award at Tate Britain for her sound installation War Damaged Musical Instruments.

Marinella Senatore (born 1977) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is characterised by a strong participatory dimension and a constant dialogue between history, popular culture and social structures. Through various assemblies, Senatore rethinks the political nature of collective formations and presents an opportunity for the public to generate social change. Intertwining with the artist’s personal autobiographical experiences and collectively shared narratives, her practice encompasses collage, performance, sculpture, photography and video. In 2013, Senatore founded The School of Narrative Dance, a nomadic school focused on non-hierarchical learning and emancipation.
Senatore lives and works in Rome and Paris. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Naples (1994 – 1997), the Conservatory of Music (1997) and the National Film School in Rome (1999 – 2001). Forthcoming solo exhibitions include CCA, Tel Aviv (2022), 34th Bienal de São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brasil (2021), Taak, Amsterdam (2021), Museo del Novecento Pistoia (2021), Fondazione Stelline, Milan (2021) and Blitz, Malta (2021). Her work has been exhibited at prestigious venues around the world, with performances and projects held in collaboration with Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2020), ICC Madrid (2020), The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg (2019), Magazzino Italian Art, New York (2019), the National Theatre Mannheim and Kunsthalle Mannheim (2018), Activating Public Space, High Line, New York (2018), Art Night, London (2018), Manifesta, Palermo (2018) and Centre Pompidou (2017), amongst several others.

2020

Yvette Mutumba is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the art magazine Contemporary And (C&). She was part of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. In 2017 /18 she taught Discourses of Globalisation as a visiting lecturer at the Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne. From 2012 to 2016 she was curator at the World Cultures Museum, Frankfurt am Main, where she co-curated the exhibitions Ware & Wissen – or the stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger, El Hadji Sy: Paintings, Performance, Politics and A Labour of Love. The latter exhibition was nominated for the Global Fine Art Award 2016. In 2016 she also co-curated Focus: African Perspectives at the Armory Show, New York. Mutumba studied Art History at the Free University of Berlin and completed her doctorate at Birkbeck, University of London. Her thesis looked at questions of representation of art from Africa and from the diaspora in German contexts during the period from the 1960s to 2011. As an author and editor, she has produced many texts and books on contemporary art from African perspectives as well as on global art history. Her latest publication is I am built inside you, ed. by C& and ifa (Sternberg Press, 2017).

Michaela Melián was born in Munich in 1956 and lives as an artist and musician in Upper Bavaria. She has been teaching at the HfbK Hamburg since 2010 with a focus on time-related media. She initially began studying music before moving to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and then continuing her art studies in London. She has been a singer and bassist with the band F.S.K. (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle) since the 1980s, and for six years from 1980 she was co-editor of the literature journal Mode und Verzweiflung. As a musician, she has produced several albums. In addition to her work at the HfbK Hamburg, Melián has gained teaching experience at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and at the ETH Zürich.
In her artistic work, Melián develops multi-layered fields of memory that produce complex relationships from a variety of references and quotations. She undertakes intensive research to prepare for her works. She weaves a multitude of different threads to create narrative arcs, in which historical facts are contrasted with private memories and stories. In 2010 Melián was awarded the Art Prize of the city of Munich. In the same year her acoustic monument, Memory Loops, was dedicated to the victims of National Socialism and unveiled in Munich. It was selected by the German Academy for Fine Arts as the audio play of the year. In 2011 Michaela Melián received the art prize of the town of Nordhorn. In 2016 the Lenbachhaus dedicated a solo exhibition to her work: Electric Ladyland.

2019

Eva Birkenstock
since 2016 director of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf

Eva Birkenstock was born in Siegen in 1978, she studied Ethnology, Art History and Spanish Language and Literature in Cologne, Havana and Berlin. In the following years she held different positions at exhibition spaces: In 2005 she joined the Kunstverein in Hamburg as an assistant. Three years later she became artistic director of the Halle für Kunst Lüneburg. In 2010 she moved to Austria to work as a curator at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, where she was in charge for a new concept for the entrance hall, the KUB Arena. Birkenstock created a place of exchange, inviting artist groups, academics and other cooperation partners. In 2014 she went to New York to head Ludlow 38, the exhibition space of the Goethe Institute, as part of a one-year curator exchange. She has curated numerous solo exhibitions, including those of Yona Friedman, Dani Gal, Dora Garcia, Nick Mauss, Katrin Mayer, Ulrike Müller, Emma Hedditch, Suchan Kinoshita, Johannes Paul Raether, Tris Vonna-Michell, Ian White and Susanne Winterling. Group exhibitions include On Performance, 2010 (curated with Joerg Franzbecker), Nairobi - A State of Mind, 2012, Beginning Good. All Good. - Actualizations of the Futurist Opera 'Victory Over the Sun', 2011 (with Kerstin Stakemeier & Nina Koeller).


Maria Thereza Alves
Artist, lives and works in Berlin

Maria Thereza Alves is an internationally renowned artist who has been living in Berlin for many years. She exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), Documenta 13 (2012), the São Paolo Biennial (2010 and 2016), the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015) and the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014). Born in Brazil in 1960, she studied at the Cooper Union in New York and has been working and exhibiting on an international level since the 1980s. Alves works on the interface between art and politics. She was an active member of the International Indian Treaty Council in 1978 and 1979. She is founder of the Brazilian Information Center, a forum for the concerns of people of indigenous origin. In 1981 she became one of the founding members of the Partido Verde Ecologista de México in São Paolo. She works on projects in the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil, in the mountain village of Matsunoyama in Japan, at China's largest port in Guangzhou, in the indigenous community of Amatlan in Central Mexico, in the farming village of Fadiouth in Senegal and in Europe. In 2015 Maria Thereza Alves participated in a symposium entitled UNMAPPING the RENAISSANCE, which was organised by Villa Romana and the Kunshistorische Institut in Florence.

 

2018

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Curator, founder of SAVVY Contemporary, in Berlin

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent curator and Curator at Large of the Documenta 14, which took place 2017 both in Athen and Kassel.
Ndikung initiated 2010 the project space SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, as a laboratory for artistic and intellectual reflection and a space for dialogue between the so-called western art and the non-western art. SAVVY earned local, as well as international recognition and worked so far with more than 45 artists living in 5 continents. Ndikung is chief editor and creator of the magazine SAVVY art.contemporary.african, a bilingual e-journal with critical reviews on contemporary African art. As a curator, art director and advisor he has worked for many international Exhibition projects and festivals, for example for the Marrakesh Biennale, the Tensta Konsthall, Sweden, the Goethe-Institut, the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) and the Centre Culturel Français in Algier.
Ndikung was born in 1977 in Cameroon, received his doctorate in medical biotechnology in Berlin and studied subsequently biophysics in Montpellier.


Nassan Tur
Artist, lives and works in Berlin

Nasan Tur, artist, born in 1974, studied in Offenbach and Frankfurt and lives in Berlin. The central theme of his work is the fragile self-expression of people in public spaces and the subliminal codes of communication. Tur has been awarded with numerous prizes in the past 15 years (including the Will-Grohmann-Preis of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin 2012 and Villa Massimo, Rome 2014). His works are featured in renowned international collections. His recent solo exhibitions include: Running Blind, Kunst Haus Wien; Nasan Tur, Deweer Gallery, Otegem, Belgium (2016), L'ombra Della Luce, Musei di Villa Torlonia - Casino Nobile / Bunker, Rome (2015); Blain | Southern, London (2015); Christine König Gallery, Vienna (2015); Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria (2014); First Shot, Kunsthal 44 Moen, Denmark (2014); Kunsthalle Mannheim (2011); Galeri Mana, Istanbul (2011); Der unbekannte Ritter, installation in public space, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz (2011); Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2009); Yapi Kredi Art Gallery, Istanbul, (2009); Goethe Institute Belgrade (2009); Lie Low, Project RIM, Taller Publico, Mexico City (2006).

 

2017

Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Artist, Professor of Sculpture at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen

Natascha Sadr Haghighian, born in 1963 in Teheran, now lives in Berlin. She first became known for her scholarly artistic work in such different forms and formats as video, performance, installation, text and sound. In 2010 she was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize and in 2013 she participated in the documenta. Her solo exhibitions have been shown at Mackba Barcelona, in the Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm (both in 2012), at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2008) and in the GAM Bologna (2006), among other locations. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including at the ICA London in 2007 and at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2011.


Moritz Wesseler

Director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein since 2013

Moritz Wesseler, born in 1980, showed his first exhibitions in 2003 in the legendary Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst in Bremerhaven - which his father had founded in 1967 – alongside such artists as Cathy Wilkes, Martin Boyce, Ceal Floyer, Anri Sala and Luc Tuymans, among others. In 2009/2010 he co-curated the series Double at MMK Frankfurt, a series of reconstructions of historical exhibits. As part of his academic traineeship at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Wesseler supervised exhibit projects by Michael Sailstorfer, Kris Martin, Jordon Wolfson and Tomas Saraceno. As the Artistic Director of Fürstenberg Zeitgenössisch in Donaueschingen / Heiligenberg he cooperated with artists such as Dirk Bell, Julian Göthe, Petrit Halilaj, Dorota Jurczak, Gareth Moore and João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva .

2016

Bettina Steinbrügge
Director of the Hamburg Kunstverein since January 2014

Bettina Steinbrügge, born in 1970 in Ostercappeln (Lower Saxony), between 1998 and 2001 worked for the Kassel Kunstverein and in 2000 she also worked for the 4th Werkleitz Biennale. From 2001-2007 she was the artistic director at the Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg. She worked as a research assistant and curator in the management team of the art space in the University of Lüneburg, where she oversaw several exhibitions as part of the EU projects transform and translate. Subsequently, from 2009, she lectured on the postgraduate masters programme of the CCC at the Haute École d’Art et de Design in Geneva. Until Autumn 2011 Bettina Steinbrügge also curated for La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, where she designed the exhibitions The End of the World as we know it and L’Idée de Nature, as well as a solo exhibition with Seb Patane. In addition, Steinbrügge has been a member of the programme team at Forum Expanded at the International Film Festival in Berlin (Berlinale) since 2007. In Winter 2010 Steinbrügge was appointed curator for contemporary art at the Belvedere in Vienna, where she was part of the team that shaped the profile of the new 21er Haus.


Katharina Grosse

Artist and Professor of Painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf

Katharina Grosse, born in Freiburg in 1961, lives in Berlin, she was a winner of the Villa Romana Prize in 1992. At the Kunstakademie in both Münster and Düsseldorf, Grosse studied under Norbert Tadeusz and Gotthard Graubner. She was professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee from 2000 to 2010. Katharina Grosse uses a compressor-powered spraygun for her artwork. Grosse created her first murals using this technique as part of her contribution to the Biennale of Sydney in 1998 and, in the same year, in the Kunsthalle Bern. In subsequent years, Grosse sprayed larger surfaces which, from 2001, also continued on into outdoor areas. Works by Katharina Grosse are located in the museum collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus, Munich, the Museo Serralves, Porto, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the De Pont Museum, Tilburg and the Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland, among other places.

2015

Susanne Weiß
Director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein

Susanne Weiß (born 1976 in Berlin) studied Museology at the HTW Berlin and is the Artistic Director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein. Weiß has worked at international art institutions such as the Royal Academy in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. From 2007 to 2008 she was Head of the Kunsthaus Dresden – Städtische Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, where she was responsible for exhibition projects including "Kopfkino" and "Under Influence". In late 2008, she realized the performance project "Ruhe und Ordnung" with Ulf Aminde at JET in Berlin. From 2009 to 2010 she worked as a Robert Bosch Cultural Manager for the Goethe Institut Gulf Region, Sharjah Museum Department in the Emirate of Sharjah. Susanne Weiss is a member of the RealismusStudio, part of the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK) in Berlin.


Discoteca Flaming Star (Cristina Gómez Barrio, Wolfgang Mayer)
Artists and professors at the Art Academy in Stuttgart

The artist group Discoteca Flaming Star was founded in 1998 by Cristina Gómez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer. Discoteca Flaming Star teaches at the Department of Visual Arts / Intermedial Design at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste (ABK) in Stuttgart. Cristina Gómez Barrio (born 1973 in Alhambra, Spain) studied Fine Art in Madrid, Munich and Berlin. In 2003 she was involved in the artist-in-residence programme of the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York and from 2005 - 2006 she was a Fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Wolfgang Mayer (born 1967 in Wertach) studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (AdBK) in Munich and completed a fellowship as part of Nan Goldin's class at the Salzburg Summer Academy. From 1996 to 1997 he participated in the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Their joint installations and performances have taken place at venues including Artists Space, the Whitney Museum and The Kitchen (all New York), the Museum Moderner Kunst [mumok] (Vienna), the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (Madrid), Galerie Freymond-Guth (Zurich) and the Tate Modern (London).

2014

Jutta Koether
Artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg

Jutta Koether, born 1958 in Cologne, is a german painter, performer, musician, writer, critic and theoretician, who lives and works in Berlin and New York. Koether was editor and (from 1985) co-editor of the music and pop culture magazine Spex and reviewer of many magazines like Texte zur Kunst, FlashArt and ArtScribe. Koether's work includes a variety of activities such as painting, performance, film and music; also her political and journalistic activities are considered by the artist as part of its artistic practice: She describes herself as "painter, performer, participant" and often works in common projects with other artists, for example with the musicians of Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore and Steven Parrino. Koether is also an active teacher and has taught teaching assignment at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg, the School of Visual Arts, New York, at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, at the Bard College, New York and at the Cooper Union, New York. Since 2010 she is professor of painting / drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

Rein Wolfs
Director of the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn

Rein Wolfs (born 1960) is since 1st March 2013 director of the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn. Since January 2008 he was the artistic director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum. From 2002 until 2007 he was the director of exhibitions of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 2003 he curated the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennial. From 1996 until 2001 he was the first director of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, where he also established the magazine Material in 1999. Among his most important exhibitions were shows with Douglas Gordon, Maurizio Cattelan, Angela Bulloch and Cady Noland at Migros Museum and retrospective exhibitions with Bas Jan Ader and Rirkrit Tiravanija as well as large shows with Urs Fischer and Erik van Lieshout at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. At Kunsthalle Fridericianum he curated major exhibitions with Christoph Büchel, Pawel Althamer and Meschac Gaba and shows with Klara Lidèn, Latifa Echakhch, Daniel Knorr, Cyprien Gaillard and Navid Nuur. Rein Wolfs is a member of several international committees and work as a publisher regularly.

2013

Janneke de Vries
Head of the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (GAK), Bremen

Janneke de Vries (born 1968) studied Art History, Modern German Literature and European Ethnology at the Phillips-Universität Marburg and the Universität Hamburg. Even during her degree, Janneke de Vries worked freelance at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt am Main and was a published art critic in both the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper and the magazines artist (Bremen) and Bildende Kunst. From 1999 to 2003 de Vries was editor-in-chief of the art magazine artkaleidoskope in Frankfurt/M. As well as freelance creation of projects and a role as a research assistant for Yilmaz Dziewior at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, she also became the Head of the Kunstverein Braunschweig in 2006. Since 2008 she has been Head of the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (GAK) in Bremen and a freelance critic for publications including the art magazines artist and Texte zur Kunst.

Ulrike Grossarth
Artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Dresden

Ulrike Grossarth (born 1952) studied dance at the Else-Lang-Schule in Cologne and the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, where she established a branch of the Free International University. She was a guest professor at various universities and since 1998 has been Professor of Übergreifendes künstlerisches Arbeiten (General Artistic Works) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Dresden. She was represented at the documenta X in 1997 with BAU I. In 2009 the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin awarded Ulrike Grossarth the Käthe Kollwitz Prize. In her pictorial and sculptural works, dances, solo pieces, films, sketches, performances and seminars, Ulrike Grossarth constantly returns her focus to questioning the body, space and the relationship between the material environment and acting persons. 


2012

Antje Majewski
Artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel

Antje Majewski (born 1968) is a painter, video artist and photographer and has been Professor of Fine Art at the Muthesius Art School, Kiel since 2010. She studied art history, history and philosophy in Cologne, Florence and Berlin before becoming a full-time artist in the 1990s. Graz Kunsthaus dedicated an extensive solo exhibition to her work in the winter of 2011/12 entitled The Gimel World. How to Make Objects Talk. Before 2011 she had solo exhibitions at the Salzburger Kunstverein (2008), at the Basler Kunsthalle (2001) and at Neugerriemschneider Gallery, Berlin, among others.

Anja Nathan-Dorn
Professor for curatorial theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe

Anja Nathan-Dorn (born 1971) was co-director of the Cologne Kunstverein from 2007 to 2011 alongside Kathrin Jentjens. During this period she dedicated solo exhibitions to artists including Nora Schultz, Olivier Foulon, Omer Fast, Stephen Prina and Kerstin Brätsch & DAS INSTITUT. Prior to this she worked in Cologne as a freelance critic, writing for the magazines Frieze, Texte zur Kunst and Metropolis M, and curator. Anja Nathan-Dorn studied art history, economics and theatre, film and media studies in Cologne and Florence.

2011

Kathrin Rhomberg
Head of the Artcollection Erste Group, Vienna

The art historian Kathrin Rhomberg, born 1963 in Bludenz, is head of the Artcollection Erste Group. 2010 she organised the 6th Berlin Biennial. From 2002 to 2007, she was director of the Kunstverein in Cologne and at the same time supervised (together with Marion von Osten) the Migration project launched by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Together with Maria Hlavajova, she is a founding director of Tranzit, a long-term initiative by the Erste Bank Group for the promotion of contemporary art projects in Central Europe, which was founded in 2002. In 2000, she was a co-curator of Manifesta 3 - European Biennale for contemporary art in Ljubljana. From 1990 to 2001, she was the curator and manager of the Secession exhibition hall in Vienna.

Willem de Rooij
Artist and professor at Städelschule, Frankfurt/M

Willem de Rooijborn in 1969 in Beverwijk in the Netherlands, lives in Berlin and teaches at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. In autumn 2010, he filled the Mies van der Rohe-building of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin with an individual exhibition. Up until the death of Jeroen de Riijke in 2006, the two artists had worked together for twelve years on 35- und 16-millimetre films, photographs, objects, installations and prints. Their joint works analyse the conventions of presentation and representation and explore the tense relationship between socially and politically orientated and autonomous production of images. The MAMbo in Bologna and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen art collection dedicated large exhibitions to their work in 2008. In 2005, de Riijke and de Rooij represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennial.

2010

Rita McBride
Artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf

The sculptor Rita McBride, born in 1960 in Des Moines (Iowa), is professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf
since 2003. After graduating in 1982 from Bard College in New York she continued her artistic training at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1991/92 she was a scholarship holder at the American Academy in Rome and in 1999 the DAAD artists-in-berlin program invited her to Berlin. From 1999 to 2000, McBride held a visiting professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. Since the end of the 1980's, she has had a number of international exhibitions including at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach (2008), the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (2002), the Vienna Secession (2000) and in the framework of the Berlin Biennial in 2008.
www.ritamcbride.net

Dr. Susanne Gaensheimer
Direktor of the Museum for Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt/M

Dr. Susanne Gaensheimer, born in 1967 in Munich, is director of the Museum for Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt/M. After studying the history of art in Munich and Hamburg she completed the Independent Study Programme of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York between 1995 and 1996. After a research fellowship at the Städtischen Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich (1998-1999), during which she curated, among other things, the exhibition Moments in time with Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas and others. Gaensheimer was the director of the Westfälischen Kunstverein in Münster from 1999 to 2001 and was then collection manager and curator for contemporary art in the Städtischen Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich until 2008. 


2009

Susanne Titz
Director of the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach

Susanne Titz has been director of the Museum Abteiberg at Mönchengladbach since October 2004. The Museum was reopened last autumn after a vast reconstruction scheme, which involved the re-organisation of the collections. Born in Stolberg in 1964, Susanne Titz studied history, art history and foreign languages and literatures at the universities of Cologne, Hamburg and Bonn. She completed her studies with a thesis on the influence of structuralism on art in the United States during the 1960s and ‘70s. Thereafter she received a grant for a study period in New York, awarded by the Ludwig-Stiftung für internationale Kunst und Verständigung. Starting in 1997 she directed the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, which in 2000 received the Adam Alsheimer Prize, awarded annually to the European art association most distinguished for its programme of exhibitions and other initiatives. Among the projects promoted by Susanne Titz were the first personal shows of Franz Ackermann, Fiona Banner, William Engelen, Morgan Fisher, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Rita McBride, Lucy McKenzie, Jonathan Meese, Anselm Reyle, Andreas Siekmann, Catherine Sullivan, Corinne Wasmuht and other artists, as well as interdisciplinary initiatives such as Valie Export. Psycho-Prognose (1998), Modell, Modell... (2000; with Björn Dahlem, Christian Jankowski, Peter Piller, Daniel Roth, Edwin Zwakmanand others), Wiederaufnahme/Retake (2001; with Dave Allen, Andrea Bowers, Annika Eriksson, Rodney Graham, Christian Marclay, Hans Niehus, Adrian Piper, Slave Pianos).

Eran Schaerf
Artist

Eran Schaerf, was born in Tel Aviv in 1962 and has lived in Berlin since 1985. His works are complex compositions interweaving historical events and contemporary politics with individual and personal experiences. His narratives, expressed in a variety of media, provide access to mobile scenic elements derived from philosophy, the history of architecture and of design. He often uses the principle of “re-enactments”, thanks to which he stratifies different narrative and temporal planes one above the other, causing past events to be seen in a new light. Eran Schaerf has exhibited in many important international shows, such as documenta 9 (1992), Sonsbeek (Arnheim, 1993) Manifesta 2 (Luxemburg) and Skulptur-projekten (Münster, 2007). Schaerf studied architecture and town planning, photography and video art. Since the mid 1990s he has been working with the philosopher Eva Meyer, chiefly in the field of films and radio plays. The silent version of their film Europa von weitem (Europe from a distance, 1999) shows scenes of everyday life in a number of European cities. In a third version of the same film the images are accompanied by a radio drama of the same name though made entirely independently of the images, despite which the simultaneous perception of the sound and the images produces a powerful synergistic effect.  


2008

Ayse Erkmen
Artist

Artist Ayse Erkmen, born in 1949 in Istanbul, lives in Istanbul and Berlin. In 1993, Ayse Erkmen received the scholarship from the Berlin Artists-in-Residence programme of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). From 1998, she taught at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel as a guest lecturer and from 2000, she was a guest professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/M. Ayse Erkmen is internationally renowned for her – often temporary – artistic works and has taken part in various editions of the Istanbul Biennale, the Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam (1996), the Kwangju Biennale (2000) and the Berlin Biennale (2001) amongst others. Her contribution to the Sculpture Projects Münster 1997 was spectacular as was her project Shipped Ships (2001) in Frankfurt, which was part of the Deutsche Bank’s art series. Ayse Erkmen has had individual exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels (2004) and at the Secession in Vienna (2002) amongst others.

Dr. Beatrice von Bismarck
Art historian and professor for art history at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HfGB), Leipzig

Dr. Beatrice von Bismarck, lives in Leipzig and Berlin, completed a doctorate at the Art History Institute of the Free University in Berlin. From 1990 to 1993, she was the head of the 20th century department at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt/M. During her time teaching at the University of Lüneburg (1993 to 1999), she helped to set up the University of Lüneburg’s Kunstraum (art space) and acted as its curator. Since 2000 Beatrice von Bismarck has been a professor of art history and visual studies at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig as well as being the programme director of the Academy’s gallery, and pro-vice-chancellor since 2003. Approaches to cultural production that combine theory and practice are at the centre of her way of working. Her current fields of research include the concept of artistic work, aesthetics, the social and political potential of curatorial work, the consequences of globalisation for the cultural sphere and the functions of the post-modern image of the artist.