Curatorial Exchange 2019
The Curatorial Exchange offers mid-career and established international curators the opportunity to engage closely with their peers and with EXPO CHICAGO’s international exhibitors while exploring Chicago’s cultural landscape through a tailored four-day program. Developed in partnership with foreign consulates and cultural agencies, the Curatorial Exchange aims to inspire future collaborations and foster new insight on gallery and institutional programs and artists’ practices from Chicago and around the world.
For our eighth edition the Curatorial Exchange included more than 10 international curators working in countries including Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Building upon the fair’s commitment to fostering international exchange in the greater Midwest, EXPO CHICAGO and Red Bull Arts Detroit have partnered to launch the Global Curatorial Initiative—a multi-city, fully funded curatorial program that connects international curators with artists, galleries, institutions, and organizations in Chicago and Detroit.
2019 Partners
2019 Participants
Max Andrews
Founder
Latitudes
Max Andrews (b. 1975) is a Bath-born, Barcelona-based curator. In 2005, together with Mariana Cánepa Luna, he founded Latitudes, a curatorial office that has worked internationally across contemporary art practices in a variety of formats and situations, and has encompassed more than 40 projects including exhibitions, public realm commissions, film screenings and discursive programmes. Latitudes current research focusses on material narratives, biographies of objects, and a world-ecological perspective on art histories. Latitudes has worked with artists including Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Amy Balkin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Heman Chong, Jan Dibbets, Dora García, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, Nicholas Mangan, Joan Morey and Lawrence Weiner, and curated exhibitions at venues including the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017–18), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Castilla y León, León (MUSAC) (2011), Kunsthal Århus (2011), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010). Since 2016 Latitudes has edited ‘Incidents of Travel’, an online series produced by KADIST documenting an offline day between curators and artists, and has tutored Barcelona Producció, artistic production grants awarded each year by the Barcelona City Council. Since 2015 Max has been Contributing Editor of frieze magazine, where he has written since 2004. Max obtained a BA (Hons) in Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton (1995–98), before completing the MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London (2001-3).
Iben Bach Elmstrøm
Independent Curator
Iben Bach Elmstrøm is an independent curator, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths University (2014). Elmstrøm is working with a range of contemporary art and curatorial projects concerned with the interplay between aesthetic dimensions, conceptual potentials and political imaginaries and questioning. Iben Bach Elmstrøm was the director of SixtyEight Art Institute from 2011 - 2018, an artistic and curatorial research organization looking to uncover, develop and further new exchanges between artists and curators. Recently she curated the exhibition 'The emperor is Naked' at Waiting Room in Minneapolis (2017) and 'Exchanging Money for Workspace' at SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen (2017) and Ars Memoria, a large exhibition showing works by Danish artists Helene Nymann at The Round Tower in Copenhagen - a historic star observatory from 1642 and recently the exhibition 'The Object is to Change the Soul' exhibition in the Renaissance garden surrounding Egeskov Castle for Heartland Festival, including the artists Kirsten Astrup, Ditte Gantriis, Marie Thams and Lea Guldditte Hestelund.
Marcella Beccaria
Chief Curator and Curator of Collections
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
Art historian, curator and author of several publications, Marcella Beccaria is Chief Curator and Curator of Collections at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea located in Rivoli-Torino, Italy. Beccaria completed an MA in Art History and Museum Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Boston University, Boston. Beccaria started her museum experience in the United States working at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. At Castello she developed the permanent collection and organized numerous exhibitions such as Claes Oldenburg Coosje van Bruggen (2006), A Room of One’s Own (2008), Vito Acconci (2010), History I never lived through (indirect witness) (2012), Marinella Senatore (2013-14), Jan Dibbets (2014), Gilberto Zorio (2017), Nalini Malani (2018). Additional co-curated exhibitions include Colori (2017), solo exhibitions on Giovanni Anselmo (2016), Wael Shawky (2016), Anri Sala (2019). Recent collaborations include the exhibitions Heart of Darkness. Can art prevent mistakes?, OGR Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Torino (2019), and Dall’argilla all’algoritmo. Arte e tecnologia. Opere dalle collezioni di Intesa Sanpaolo e Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Gallerie d’Italia, Milano (2019). International museum collaborations include The ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; Centre Pompidou, Paris. Beccaria authored many monographic catalogs, and she edited several books about Castello’s collections, including Ten Years and Beyond. The Collection of the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – CRT for Turin and Piedmont (2010). As a writer, she also collaborated with several magazines and published with museum institutions such as La Biennale di Venezia; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu Serralves, Porto; Stedelijk Museum, Ghent; Istanbul Biennial; Kunstmuseum Winterthur; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; SAM-Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Centre Pompidou, Metz; Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg. She authored Olafur Eliasson, a monograph published by Tate, London (2013).
Zippora Elders
Curator and Art Historian
Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen
Zippora Elders (NL) is a curator and art historian based between Amsterdam and Berlin. She is artistic director of Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen - Island for Art and Heritage in The Netherlands and cocurator of exhibitions for Sonsbeek 2020. Previously she has worked at Foam museum for photography and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, amongst others. She regularly writes, lectures and advices for various international institutions.
Bas Hendrikx
Artistic Director
Kunsthalle Amsterdam
Bas Hendrikx is a Dutch curator. He has curated exhibitions for amongst others De Appel arts centre (Amsterdam, NL), CIAP Kunstverein (Hasselt, BE), museum De Domijnen (Sittard, NL), and Skulptur Bredelar (Bredelar, DE). His publication Authenticity? Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age was published in 2017. He has commissioned online works of art for stedelijk.nl, deappel.nl, and impakt.nl. Bas is currently curating a series of exhibitions for Garage (Rotterdam, NL), and he is the founder of Kunsthalle Amsterdam.
Jaimie Isaac
Curator of Indigenous and Contemporary Art
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Jaimie Isaac is a Winnipeg-based curator and interdisciplinary artist, member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Treaty 1 territory of Anishinaabe and British heritage. Isaac holds a degree in Art History and an Arts and Cultural Management Certificate from the University of Winnipeg and a Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia, with research focus on Indigenous Curatorial Praxis, and methodologies in decolonizing and Indigenizing.
Recent exhibitions include Woven Together at the Kelowna Art Gallery, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Behind Closed Doors, organic, Insurgence Resurgence (co curated) and Vernon Ah Kee: cantchant, Boarder X (national tour) We Are On Treaty Land, and Quiyuktchigaewin; Making Good. Isaac co-founded of The Ephemerals Collective, which was long-listed for the 2017 and 2019 Sobey Art Award. Jaimie collaborated on the artistic team with on a public sculpture at the Forks called Nimama at South Point path; Niizhoziibean and collaborated on a public art project, Cyclical Motion: Indigenous Art & Placemaking. She curated and collaborated on Leah Decter’s official denial (trade value in progress) a national project. Jaimie has contributed articles for Art + Wonder, C Magazine, Bordercrossings, and essays for exhibition catalogues; Insurgence Resurgence, Boarder X, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, and unsacred, and contributed in collections of writing within The Land We Are Now: Writers and Artists Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation and Public 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital Journal. Jaimie was co-faculty for the Wood Land School at Plug In Summer Institute in 2016. She has presented research at many conferences in North America and Europe. Isaac was one of the Canada Council’s Indigenous delegation at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She is the Advisory Committee for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba Museum and is on the board of directors for Bordercrossings Magazine.
Mariana Cánepa Luna
Founder
Latitudes
Mariana Cánepa Luna (b. 1977) is a Montevideo-born, Barcelona-raised-and-based curator. In 2005, together with Max Andrews, she founded Latitudes, a curatorial office that has worked internationally across contemporary art practices in a variety of formats and situations, and has encompassed more than 40 projects including exhibitions, public realm commissions, film screenings and discursive programmes. Latitudes current research focusses on material narratives, biographies of objects, and a world-ecological perspective on art histories. Latitudes has worked with artists including Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Amy Balkin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Heman Chong, Jan Dibbets, Dora García, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, Nicholas Mangan, Joan Morey and Lawrence Weiner, and curated exhibitions at venues including the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017–18), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Castilla y León, León (MUSAC) (2011), Kunsthal Århus (2011), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010). Since 2016 Latitudes has edited ‘Incidents of Travel’, an online series produced by KADIST documenting an offline day between curators and artists, and has tutored Barcelona Producció, artistic production grants awarded each year by the Barcelona City Council. She is a regular contributor to art-agenda and since 2015 is a board member of the Fundació Privada AAVC governing Hangar—Centre of Production, Research and Visual Arts in Barcelona. She graduated in Art History from the Universitat de Barcelona (1995–2000) and studied Cinema History at DAMS, Università degli Studi di Bologna (1999) before completing the MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London (2002–4).
Julia Paoli
Curator of Contemporary Art
Mercer Union
Julia Paoli is a curator of contemporary art based in Toronto. She is currently Director of Exhibitions & Programs at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art. She was previously Associate Curator at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery where she organised numerous solo projects including Emily Mast: The Cage is a Stage; Leslie Hewitt: Collective Stance; Bik Van der Pol: Eminent Domain; The Mouth Holds the Tongue; Julia Dault: Color me Badd; Mike Nelson: Amnesiac Hide and Jimmy Robert: Draw the Line. She also worked as Assistant Curator on Ydessa Hendeles: The Milliner’s Daughter; Franz Erhard Walther: Call to Action and The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding. She is the editor of Draw the Line, a critical reader on the work of Jimmy Robert published by the Power Plant as part of its series Power Plant Pages. Prior to her role at The Power Plant, Julia organised projects including Dispersion at Trinity Square Video; Social Choreography at Gallery TPW; The Rest is Real: Video Works by Aleesa Cohene, Vtape; and co-curated a presentation of A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner’s Community Action Center with the Feminist Art Gallery and Pleasure Dome. In 2011 Julia received her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College where commissioned new works by artists A.K. Burns and MPA.
Maria Inés Rodriguez
Curator
Museu de Arte São Paulo
María Inés Rodríguez, has a curatorial and institutional practice relating to consolidate the museum as a platform for knowledge trough the exhibition, cultural and educational programs. She is currently curator at large at MASP, Sao Paulo. She was previously the Director of CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain of Bordeaux ( 2014–18), her program at CAPC includes major retrospectives with significant artists like Judy Chicago, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Franz Erhard Walther, Beatriz Gonzalez and site specific projects for the nave of the museum with Danh Vo, Leonor Antunes, Rosa Barba, Naufus Ramirez Figueroa. As well a project of exhibitions dedicated to emergent artist and curators in co production with Jeu de Paume, Paris and Museo Amparo, Puebla. As a chief curator of the MUAC in Mexico City, she led the public, collections, and exhibitions programs. She has worked with the team on exhibitions and research projects exploring the appropriation of public space in art, design, education, architecture, and urbanism by artists such as Yona Friedman, R & E Bouroullec, Teresa Margolles, Nicolás Paris, Akram Zatari, Jonas Meckas, Carlos Cruz Diez and La Ribot among others. From 2009 to 2011 she was chief curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon (MUSAC) in Spain, with a program dealing with the links between artistic production and historic, political and social contexts, favouring a dialogue on the local and global. This approach was reflected in a series of solo exhibitions that included Claire Fontaine and Alexander Apóstol, as well as in group exhibitions such as El Grito, and Model Kits, and in the collection of monographic editions Arte y Arquitectura AA MUSAC. Parallel to her curatorial work, Mrs. Rodríguez has organised public lectures and exhibitions around the topics of printed matter and architecture. In 2005 she formed Tropical Paper editions, which now exists as an active website dedicated to contemporary creation in the Tropical region. She has been awarded the following grants: Fondation Patiño - Ville de Genève, American Center Foundation, Apex Art Center in New York and Davidoff Arts Initiative. From 2017 she is President of Comité Art Citoyen France, Fondation Carasso and Member of Martell Foundation Board in France.
Sarah Robayo Sheridan
Curator
Art Museum at University of Toronto
Sarah Robayo Sheridan is specialized in the presentation and dissemination of contemporary art. She has worked in a variety of non-profit galleries, museums and festivals both in Canada and abroad and has lectured in Curatorial Studies. Her recent exhibition Figures of Sleep is currently short-listed for the 2019 UMAC award. Her writing has appeared in arts magazines, anthologies and catalogues and her book Les Levine: Transmedia, 1964-1974 was published in 2018.
Roberta Tenconi
Curator
PirelliHangarBicocca
Roberta Tenconi is currently the Curator at PirelliHangarBicocca in Milan. Since her appointment in September 2105 she has curated solo shows by Giorgio Andreotta Calò (2019), Matt Mullican (2018), Leonor Antunes (2018), Eva Kot'átková (2018), Rosa Barba (2017), Laure Prouvost (2016), and Petrit Halilaj (2015), and co-curated (with Christian Boltanski, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Chiara Parisi) the group exhibition "Take Me (I'm Yours)" (2017). She is currently preparing solo exhibitions of Cerith Wyn Evans and Neïl Beloufa. Prior to her work at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Tenconi was Assistant Curator for "The Encyclopedic Palace," the International Exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale curated by Massimiliano Gioni (2013). Between 2006 and 2015 she worked at the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan in the capacity of Assistant Curator and Special Projects Manager, organizing various ambitious projects and solo shows with international artists such as Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (2013), Cyprien Gaillard (2012), Pipilotti Rist (2011), Alighiero Boetti (2011), Paul McCarthy (2010), Tacita Dean (2009), Tino Sehgal (2008), Peter Fischli and David Weiss (2008), Pawel Althamer (2007), Paola Pivi (2006), and the group exhibition "The Great Mother" (2015). While developing and collaborating to various other curatorial independent projects, in 2006 she was part of the curatorial team of the 4. Berlin Biennale and served as Visiting Curator at Melbourne Contemporary Art Spaces (2006). She has written several exhibition texts for institutions around the world (Berlin Biennale, Palazzo Grassi, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi among the others), has contributed writings to numerous magazines including Mousse, Domus, Flash Art, Muse, and L'Officiel Arte and has collaborated on many editorial projects, more recently with Hatje Cantz, Skira, and Mousse Publishing. She regularly lectures, participates to panel discussions and serves as juror or selecting curator in art prizes, nominee and acquisition committees—as recently for Phaidon, MAXXI Bulgari Prize 2018, MiArt fair, Henraux International Sculpture Award, and the Paulo Cunha e Silvs Art Prize from the City of Porto.