Art Taaalkssss: Defne Ayas / Natasha Ginwala

Photo: Victoria Tomaschko

As curators, Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala have been engaged in conceiving daring exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing collaborative contexts and interdisciplinary frameworks that also provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. As the Artistic Directors of 13th Gwangju Biennale, which will open in September 2020, they intend to remain committed to the metabolic process of commissioning artworks, expanded publishing and live performances, while continuing their active research in models of understanding shaped by the specificity of socio-political realities, complex historiography, cultural knowledge systems, and ancestral traditions, beyond the horizons of western reason.

Defne Ayas has served as a director and curator to several cultural institutions and research initiatives across the world, including the Netherlands, China, the United States and Russia. Currently working as a Curator at Large at Performa in New York and V-A-C Foundation in Moscow, Ayas was the director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (2012 – 2017). She has served as curator of the Pavilion of Turkey in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), as co-curator of the 6th Moscow Biennale (2015), and as co-curator of the 11th Baltic Triennial (2012).

Natasha Ginwala has curated several international exhibitions and is a widely published arts writer. Ginwala is currently Associate Curator at Gropius Bau, Berlin. Recent projects include Contour Biennale 8 and she was part of the curatorial team of documenta 14 (2017). She is artistic director of the interdisciplinary arts festival Colomboscope in Sri Lanka. Ginwala was a member of the artistic team for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), curatorial advisor and public programs curator of The Gujral Foundation project My East is Your West at the 56th Venice Biennale, and curated The Museum of Rhythm at Taipei Biennial 2012 and at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (2016).