miart 2020 announces its Curatorial Advisory Circle

miart – international modern and contemporary art fair announced the Members of its Curatorial Advisory Circle, a newly devised board which, together with the fair’s Curatorial Team, will contribute in shaping new contents and scenarios for the next edition.

The 25th edition of miart, organized by Fiera Milano and held from April 17 to 19, 2020 (with the VIP Preview on April 16), will see the collaboration of 5 International Curators who will take part in the new Curatorial Advisory Circle. Each member will bring a different experience and vision, with the aim of an ever-expanding cooperation.

miart is delighted to welcome as Members of the Curatorial Advisory Circle:

João Laia, Chief Curator, Kiasma – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Steven Learner, Creative Director, Collective Design, New York
Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Founder, ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge, Accra
Florence Ostende, Curator, Barbican Art Gallery, London
Fabian Schöneich, Curator and Writer, Berlin

BIOGRAPHIES

João Laia is the chief curator for exhibitions at Kiasma – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Recent exhibitions include In Free Fall (2019) at CaixaForum, Barcelona, Vanishing Point (2019) at Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon, Drowning in a Sea of Data (2019) and Transmissions from the Etherspace (2017) at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, foreign bodies(2018) at P420, Bologna, 10000 Years Later Between Venus and Mars (2017-18) at Oporto City Hall Gallery, H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D (2016) at MMOMA – Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Hybridize or Disappear (2015) at MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. Laia co-curated the 19th and 20th editions of the contemporary art festival Videobrasil (2014–18) at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo. Other exhibitions, performance programs and screenings were held at CCCB – Xcèntric (Barcelona), Galeria ZDB and MAAT – Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon), DRAF – David Roberts Art Foundation, Delfina Foundation, South London Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery (London), Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Kurzfilmtage – International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and CAC – Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius). In 2012-13 Laia attended the post-graduate research program CuratorLab at Konstfack, Stockholm and in 2014 was part of the curatorial residency of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. He edited A Multiple Community (SESC publishing 2018), co-edited Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s monograph Spiral Forest (Mousse Publishing 2018) and writes for magazines such as Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike or Terremoto.

Steven Learner is an architect, interior designer and curator based in New York. Since 1996 his eponymous architecture and interior design firm has created widely published buildings and interiors for clients such as Christie’s, the Guggenheim Museum, and Sean Kelly Gallery. Private projects include residences for prominent artists, collectors, and gallerists and the personal museum for a noted contemporary art collection. In 2013 Learner founded Collective Design, creating the first modern vintage and collectible design show in New York. Through its innovative and experimental format, the fair revealed contemporary collecting trends and created a platform to elevate and expose numerous young galleries and design studios to a broad and engaged audience. As Creative Director, Learner selected each year’s international array of exhibitors and commissioned installations with prominent contemporary designers including Gaetano Pesce, Hella Jongerius and Nendo as well as cultural institutions such as Noguchi Museum, Design Academy Eindhoven, Storefront for Art and Architecture and Cranbrook Academy of Art. In the coming months, Learner is participating in several international panels on contemporary design.

Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, filmmaker and art historian. In her work, she has sought to understand the various relativities of cultural contexts, and to give voice to that understanding in a way that speaks to both the actors and communities of that context, as well as the wider world. She is director of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge, through which she has pioneered a pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia, reimagining narratives from across and about the continent; and a Mobile Museums project that travels into communities, collects material culture and exhibits them in those communities, creating discourse about narratives, memory and value. She has spoken widely on cultural narratives and institution-building in Africa, in institutions like the British Museum and Cambridge University. She has written for publications like frieze and African Metropolitan Architecture, and is publishing her first novel, The God Child, with Bloomsbury Publishing in 2019. She has also made several films, a cross of fiction, travel essay, and documentary, that have been shown at museums like The New Museum, Tate Modern, and LACMA. She is the recipient of the 2015 Art & Technology Award from LACMA; of the 2016 AIR Award, which “seeks to honour and celebrate extraordinary African artists who are committed to producing provocative, innovative and socially-engaging work”; and of the inaugural 2018 Soros Arts Fellowship. She has been named one of the Apollo ’40 under 40′; one of 50 African Trailblazers by The Africa Report; one of 12 African women making history by Okayafrica; and a Quartz Africa Innovator; and is a 2019 Global South Visiting Fellow at Oxford University.

Florence Ostende is Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. Her recent exhibitions include Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (Barbican, London), Daria Martin: Tonight the World (Barbican, London), The Japanese House: Architecture and Life After 1945(Barbican, London), Dioramas (Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt), À Propos de Nice: 1947-1977 (Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice), Ugo Rondinone: I Love John Giorno (Palais de Tokyo, Paris) and Pierre Huyghe: +/- (The Artist’s Institute, New York). She was Adjunct Curator at Dallas Contemporary (2011-14) and a tutor of art theory/exhibition history at The University of Art and Design (HEAD), Geneva (2013-15). She has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and publications. She is a member of the artistic committee of Fluxus Art Projects, London.

Fabian Schöneich is a curator, writer, and editor based in Berlin, Germany. From 2014 to 2018 he was the curator of Portikus in Frankfurt, where he has realized solo and group exhibitions with Minouk Lim, Ade Darmawan, Jana Euler, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Shahryar Nashat, Amy Sillman, and Moyra Davey, among others. He worked as an assistant curator at the Kunsthalle Basel from 2012 to 2014 and curated the 2013 and 2014 editions of the Performance Project of LISTE Art Fair in Basel, which included performances by Aki Onda and Akio Suzuki, Adam Linder, Anne Imhof, Ligia Lewis, and Alexander Baczyński-Jenkins, among others. In 2011, Schöneich co-organized the „Melanchotopia” exhibition and program as an assistant curator at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Since 2012 he worked as an advisory curator for the exhibition space SALTS in Basel/Birsfelden and from 2015 to 2017 as an advisor for the Focus, Frame, and Live sections of Frieze art fair in London and New York. Recently he has edited a comprehensive monograph with the artist duo Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel titled “Body of Work” as well as a monograph titled “Magic Center” with artist Ade Darmawan.