The Istanbul Biennial is a contemporary art exhibition that has been held biennially in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1987. The Biennial has been organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) since its inception.
Jens Hoffmann Mesén is a writer, editor, educator, and exhibition maker. His work has attempted to expand the definition and context of exhibition making. From 2003 to 2007 Hoffmann was director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London. He is the former director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art from 2007 to 2016 and deputy director for exhibitions and programs at The Jewish Museum from 2012 to 2017, a role from which he was terminated following an investigation into sexual harassment allegations brought forth by staff members. Hoffmann has held several teaching positions including California College of the Arts, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as others.
Vasif Kortun is a curator, writer and educator in the field of contemporary art, its institutions, and exhibition practices. Kortun served as the founding director of several international institutions, including SALT, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Proje4L, and the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. In 2006, he received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies for his "experimental approach and openness to new ideas to challenge the contemporary art world and push its parameters beyond national or international, local or global developments." Kortun has written extensively on contemporary art and visual culture in Turkey for publications and periodicals internationally. He currently lives in Ayvalık, a seaside town on the northwestern Aegean coast of Turkey.
Peter Sarkisian is an American new media artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He combines video projection and sculpture to create hybrid-format, multi-media installations.
Xurban collective was an international art collective founded in 2000. Core members of the group are Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal, whose transatlantic collaborations took the form of media projects and installations. xurban_collective's projects instigate the questioning, examination, and discussion of contemporary politics, theory, and ideology, utilizing documentary photography, video, new media and text. The collective focuses specifically on areas of regional conflicts, military spatial confinement, urban segregation and neoliberal exclusion strategies. In September 2012 xurban_collective members concluded their collaboration to focus on their personal projects, artistic research and production.
Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-founder with Guven Incirlioglu of xurban collective (2000–12), and is known for his research-based conceptual art practice. He is an Associate Professor of New Media and Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY.
Prospect New Orleans is a multi-venue contemporary art event in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Brian Guidry is an American contemporary painter, and installation artist.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American writer, art historian and exhibition maker who served as the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin in 2009 and from 2016 to 2023. She was also the founding Director of Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti from 2017 to 2023. She was Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University (2013-2019). She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. She is currently Honorary Guest Professor at FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland. She has lectured widely at art and educational institutions and Universities for the Arts, including the Goethe University, Frankfurt; Harvard University, Cambridge; MIT, Boston; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli; Cooper Union, New York; The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Monash University, Melbourne; Di Tella University, Buenos Aires; Northwestern University, Chicago, and UNITO, Università di Torino, Turin.
C24 Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located on West 24th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City. The gallery was founded in 2011 by Emre and Maide Kurttepeli and partners, Mel Dogan, and Asli Soyak. David C. Terry is the gallery’s director and curator. Terry joined the gallery with a reputable background in nonprofit arts administration, curation, and his own professional art practice. His experience in the arts world has been influential in building C24 Gallery’s reputation for showing critical and socially engaged artwork. Terry and C24 have focused on exhibiting work by a diverse roster of international and internationally renowned Black and women artists, such as Ethiopian-Israeli painter Nirit Takele and American ceramicist Tammie Rubin.
Matthew Joseph Williams Drutt is an American curator and writer who specializes in modern and contemporary art and design. Based in New York, he has owned and operated his independent consulting practice Drutt Creative Arts Management (DCAM) since 2013l. He is currently working with the Lee Ufan Foundation in Arles on an exhibition of non-objective art foor Fall 2024. More recently, he worked with the Nationalmuseum Stockholm on an exhibition and publication of modern and contemporary American crafts gifted from artists and collectors in the United States to the museum, originally organized by his mother, Helen Drutt. He has worked more recently with the Eckbo Foundation in Oslo on the first major monograph of Thorwald Hellesen published in English and Norwegian in by Arnoldsche Art Publishers. He is currently also developing several other titles with the publisher. Formerly, he worked with the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland (2013–2016) and the State Hermitage Museum in Russia (2013–2014), consulting on exhibitions, publications, and collections. He continues to serve as an Advisory Curator to the Hermitage Museum Foundation Israel. In 2006, the French Government awarded him the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2003, his exhibition Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism won Best Monographic Exhibition Organized Nationally from the International Association of Art Critics.
Leandro Erlich is an internationally exhibited Argentine conceptual artist.
Ala Younis is a Kuwaiti research-based visual artist, painter, and curator, based in Amman, Jordan. Younis initiates journeys in archives and narratives, and reinterprets collective experiences that have collapsed into personal ones. Through research, she builds collections of objects, images, information, narratives, and notes on why/how people tell their stories. Her practice is based on found material, and on creating materials when they cannot be found or when they do not exist.
Defne Ayas is a curator, lecturer, and editor in the field of contemporary art and its institutions. Ayas directed, cofounded, curated, and advised a number of art institutes, initiatives and exhibition platforms across the globe, including in the United States, Netherlands, China and Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, Lithuania, and Italy. Exploring art's role within social and political processes, Ayas is best known for conceiving innovative exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Working between Berlin and New York since 2018, she is currently serving as Senior Program Advisor and Curator at Large at Performa. Until June 2021, Ayas was also the Artistic Director of 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.
Carl Joe Williams is an American visual artist based in New Orleans.
Gia Maisha Hamilton is an applied anthropologist who employs methodology to investigate land, labor and cultural production while examining social connectivity within institutions and communities. As a model builder, Hamilton co-founded an independent African centered school, Little Maroons in 2006; later, she opened a creative incubator space- Gris Gris Lab in 2009 and designed and led the Joan Mitchell Center artist residency program in New Orleans as a consultant from 2011- 2013 and director from 2013-2018.
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was raised in Enugu and studied under sculptor El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before traveling as an artist and curator. In the United States, he completed his doctorate at Emory University in 2013 and became the curator of African art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. In 2017, he moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Nzewi has curated the Nigerian Afrika Heritage Biennial three times, the Dak'Art biennial in 2014, and independent exhibitions at Atlanta's High Museum of Art and New York's Richard Taittinger Gallery. Nzewi also exhibited internationally as an artist and artist-in-resident.
Claire Tancons is a curator, critic, and historian of art. She was born in Guadeloupe and is currently based in Paris, after living for nearly two decades between the Caribbean, primarily in Trinidad & Tobago, and the United States, mostly in New York and New Orleans.
Dave Greber is an American digital artist and installation artist known for his digital animations and Video installations. His work explores the relationship between the natural world, mysticism and contemporary modes of communication.
James Esber is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for paintings that utilize a wide range of materials, including Plasticine, to distort and reconstruct images of American pop culture. Esber is also known for works that involve participatory art practice, including This Is Not a Portrait (2009-2011), in which over a hundred people were tasked with making an ink drawing of Osama bin Laden during the War in Afghanistan.
