Advisory Committee
Paul Domela is Programme Director and former Deputy Chief Executive (2001-2007) of the Liverpool Biennial, where he has been co-ordinating the International exhibition and was responsible for developing dozens of international partnerships, collaborations and conferences (including Urban Ecologies, and Art and Culture in Times of Expediency). Domela is Board Member of the International Foundation Manifesta (IFM), the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. In collaboration with IFM, he co-ordinated Manifesta Coffee Breaks (2004-05), a series of meetings addressing challenges for visual art and curatorial work in a contemporary, changing European context, resulting in a publication.
He is also Curator at Site (with John Byrne), an exhibition project for John Moores School of Art and Design. In 2004 he co-curated the Liverpool/Manchester section of Shrinking Cities at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Between 1992-1999 Domela was running the public programmes at the Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht) – a research institute for design, theory and fine art.
Dr Ursula Zeller is Director of Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen and the Triennale of Contemporary Art Oberschwaben organized by the Museum. Previously, she was the Head of Visual Arts department at the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), Stuttgart (1995-2007), deputy director at the Galerie der Stadt, Stuttgart (1990-95), assistant curator at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1988-90) and Fellow of the J.P.Getty-Foundation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1987-88). She is regular contributor to art journals and editor of The German contributions to the Venice Biennale 1895-2007 (DuMont Verlag, Cologne: 2007). She also organized several conferences including Art in Central and Eastern Europe, Art Exchange, and the Biennials in Dialogue series, taking place in Kassel (2000), Frankfurt (2002) and Singapore (2006).
Dr Yongwoo Lee is Founding Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Gwangju Biennale and Executive Vice President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. He was formerly a professor at the Korea University in Seoul (until 1998), the Artistic director of the First Gwangju Biennale (1995), Korean commissioner for the Venice Biennale’s special exhibition Tiger’s Tail (1995), and the curator of Electronic Maple (inaugural exhibition at the New York Center for Media Arts, 2001). His main area of interest is contemporary art criticism with a focus on media art. Yongwoo Lee is the author of several essays on Art Nam June Paik and The Origins of Video Art (Oxford University, 1998).
Khalil Rabah is a Palestinian artist and curator who lives and works in Ramallah. Rabah is the Founder of The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind and a co-founder of Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem and ArtSchool Palestine in London. He was the Founding Director of the Riwaq Biennale in Palestine in October 2007. As an artist, Khalil Rabah has participated in a number of international group exhibitions in France, Italy, Belgium, London, Greece, Germany and Switzerland and has undertaken various artist-in-residence programmes in Europe. He has also participated in several biennials, including the 24th São Paulo Biennial, the 11th Biennale of Sydney, the 1st Gwangju Biennale, the 9th Istanbul Biennial and the 53rd Venice Biennale, which saw the first-ever Palestinian participation. He taught architecture at Birzeit University and fine art at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.
Elena Filipovic is a writer and curator at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels.
She was co-curator, with Adam Szymczyk, of the 5th Berlin Biennial, When things cast no shadow (2008) and co-edited The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (MIT, 2006) and The Biennial Reader (Hatje Cantz, 2010). Her curatorial projects include the first major solo exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s work in Latin America, at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paolo and the Fundacion Proa in Buenos Aires (2008-2009), and Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form at Wiels, the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2010–11). She is tutor of theory/exhibition history at De Appel postgraduate curatorial training program and advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She is also guest curator of the Satellite Program of the Jeu de Paume in Paris for 2009-2010.
Yacouba Konaté is a writer, scholar, art critic, and curator of numerous exhibitions around the world. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Concody and member of l’Académie des Arts, des Sciences et des Cultures d’Afrique et des Diasporas in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Previously, he was a Fulbright Professor at Stanford University (1998), taught at l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales in France (2004–08) and at The University of Laval (2007), and was a Carter Fellow at the University of Florida, Gainesville (2007). Konaté was Artistic Director of Dak’Art 2006, the 7th Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Senegal. He wrote several books and essays about contemporary African culture and politics including the first publication dedicated to the history of Dak’Art – La Biennale de Dakar: Pour une esthétique de la création africaine contemporaine - Tête à tête avec Adorno (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). In 2008 he was elected president of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
Jorge A. Fernandez Torres is the Director of the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wilfredo Lam (Wilfredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art) and the Havana Biennial.
He is a former member of the Commission for Cuban Cultural Development of UNESCO and served on the Advisory Council for Arts fo the National Library of Cuba (2000-2001). He was Vice Rector of the Higher Institute of Arts in Havana (1998-2008). Torres curated and authored catalogue essays for numerous exhibitions in Cuba and Internationally, including: El lugar construido (Scholtter Foundation, Spain, 2005) and Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba (Havana, 2009).
Marah Braye is the Chief Executive Officer of the Biennale of Sydney, Australia’s flagship international festival of contemporary art. The 2008 Biennale of Sydney was the first under her leadership. With a career spanning arts management and visual arts publishing, Marah Braye was General Manager at Sherman Galleries (2001–06) and prior to this worked in publishing for a number of years – as Managing Editor at Fine Art Publishing (where she produced publications on contemporary Australian and international art), and as Publishing Manager and Development Editor at HarperCollins Publishers.