Quarterly

Fall 2012 | ArteZine

Biographies

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Haig Aivazian is an artist, curator and writer born in Lebanon and currently based in New York City. He has a BFA from Concordia University in Montréal Canada and an MFA from Northwestern University in Chicago, USA. He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. He has been involved in a number of curatorial initiatives including Roads Were Open/Roads Were Closed at The Third Line gallery in Dubai (2008) and was the Associate Curator of the 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 entitled Plot for a Biennial. His work has been shown in France, Canada, the UAE and the United States, and the first installment of his ongoing project entitled FUGERE (A Series of Olympiadic Events) was commissioned and exhibited in the 9th edition of the Sharjah Biennial (2009). Aivazian has written for a number of websites and publications including Bidoun, FUSE, AdBusters, Ibraaz.org, AMCA, The Arab Studies Journal as well as several exhibition catalogues. He is currently represented by Lombard Freid Projects in New York.

Since 1993 Zdenka Badovinac has been the Director of Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, comprised, since 2011, of two museum locations: the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova – MSUM. She has curated numerous exhibitions presenting both Sloven¬ian and international artists and initiated the first collection of Eastern European art; Moderna galerija’s Arteast 2000+ Collection. Badovinac has been systematically dealing with the processes of redefining history and the questions of the definitions of the different avant-garde traditions of contemporary art. Exhibitions that explore these ideas include the Body and the East – from the 1960s to the Present,1998 at Moderna galerija, Ljubljana. She continued in 2000 with the first public display of the Arteast2000+ Collection: 2000+ Arteast Collection: The Art of Eastern Europe in Dialogue with the West at Moderna galerija, 2000; and then with a series of Arteast Exhibitions (2003-2008). More recent exhibition include The Schengen Women, Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana, 2008, Museum of Parallel Narratives in the framework of L’Internationale, MACBA, Barcelona, 2011. Badovinac was Slovenian Commissioner at the Venice Biennale from 1993 to 1997 and 2005. and Austrian Commissioner at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002 and is the President of CIMAM, 2010–13.

 Anthony Downey is the Director of the Masters Programme in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He holds a Ph.D from Goldsmiths College, London, is the Editor of Ibraaz, sits on the editorial board of Third Text, and is a Consulting Editor for Open Space(Vienna).

As part of the 54th Venice Bienniale, he co-edited The Future of a Promise catalogue and has written essays for Representing Islam: Comparative Perspectives (2011); Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art (2009); Iran Inside Out (2009); Art and Patronage in the Near and Middle East (2010); Giorgio Agamben: Legal, Political and Philosophical Potentialities (2013); Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art(2010); Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artist’s Writings(revised edition, forthcoming 2011); Cultural Theory, edited by David Oswell (2010); andTheory in Contemporary Art since 1985, edited by Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (2012). He is currently researching a book on politics and aesthetics (Thames and Hudson, 2013).

Ceren Erdem is a curator and writer based in New York. She is the co-curator of Court Square, a Long Island City based project space devoted to supporting the production and exhibition of new work by emerging artists, writers, and curators and co-funder and editor-at-large of Interventions, a web-based journal and curatorial platform of Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies program at Columbia University where she received her MA degree. She previously worked in the Istanbul Biennial and the British Council where she initiated international programs in Turkey and wider South East Europe across different art forms and creative sectors. Erdem also holds an MFA degree in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design from Sabanci University in Istanbul.

Özge Ersoy is a curator and critic based in Istanbul. Ersoy worked at various independent art spaces in New York, Istanbul, and Cairo, and obtained her M.A. in Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Her writings have been published in Modern Painters, Domus, Bidoun, Nafas, and Art Unlimited, among others. Ersoy is an editor at m-est.org, and is the project manager of Collectorspace, a nonprofit organization based in New York and Istanbul.

Charles Esche is a curator and writer. He is Director of van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and co-director of Afterall Journal and Books based at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London. He is a visiting lecturer at a number of European art academies and a board member of Manifesta. In 2011 he will co-curate an exhibition of the museum’s collection in the CAPC, Bordeaux entitled Strange and Close. In the last years, he has curated the following biennials 5th U3 triennial in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2010; 3rd Riwaq Biennale, Ramallah, Palestine, 2009 together with Reem Fadda, 2nd Riwaq Biennale 2007 with Khalil Rabah; the 9th Istanbul Biennial 2005 with Vasif Kortun, Esra Sarigedik Öktem and November Paynter and the Gwangju Biennale 2002 in Korea with Hou Hanru and Song Wang Kyung. Before that he was co-curator of Tate Triennial: Intelligence at the Tate Britain, London and Amateur – Variable Research Initiatives at Konstmuseum and Konsthall, Göteborg, both in 2000. From 2000-2004 he was Director of the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö. From 1998-2002 he organized the international art academic research project called ‘protoacademy’ at Edinburgh College of Art. From 1993-1997 he was Visual Arts Director at Tramway, Glasgow. A book of his selected writings, Modest Proposals, was published by Baglam Press, Istanbul in 2005. He has written for numerous catalogues and magazines including: The Netherlands, for example (ed.), JP Ringier, 2007; Collective Creativity, Fredericianum, Kassel, 2006; Artur Zmijewski, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005;Shifting Map, NAI, Rotterdam, 2004. He has written for art magazines Artforum, Frieze, Parkett and Art Monthly among others.

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