KASSEL.- Six outstanding international contemporary art experts have been appointed to documenta 16's new Finding Committee, unanimously approved by the Supervisory Board upon recommendation of the Managing Director. The Committee brings together Yilmaz Dziewior, Sergio Edelsztein, N'Goné Fall, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Mami Kataoka, and Yasmil Raymond.
The Finding Committee has the task of inviting pioneering figures in contemporary art to submit their concept to become the Artistic Direction of documenta 16 in Kassel and of then selecting the most promising format for implementation from those submissions presented.
The Managing Director of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, Andreas Hoffmann, states: "I am delighted we have succeeded in attracting such a high-caliber Finding Committee for documenta 16, immediately following on from the Organizational Development. With their proven expertise and varied backgrounds, the participants represent to an extraordinary degree the diversity and international nature of the documenta exhibitions. With their commitment to the Finding Committee, they demonstrate a great sense of responsibility for contemporary art and documenta at this very special time – something for which I would like to thank all members of the Committee most sincerely. I look forward to working with them and to resolutely proceeding towards documenta 16 with this line-up. I am certain that the expert and multi-perspective make-up of the new Finding Committee will lead to a forward-looking proposal for the Artistic Direction. This lays the foundation for the international art world to once again be a familiar and welcome guest in Kassel."
The Members of the Finding Committee:
Yilmaz Dziewior (*1964 Bonn, Germany) is Director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
Previously, Dziewior was Director of Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) from 2009. In 2015, Dziewior curated the Austrian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale and in 2022 the German Pavilion with a solo exhibition by Maria Eichhorn. Before working in Bregenz, he was Director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg for eight years, while also teaching as a Professor of Art Theory at the University of Fine Arts there. Already from 1996 to 1999 he was freelancer for Museum Ludwig. In 1997 he curated a project there with Sarah Lucas and in 1999 was responsible for the contemporary section of the exhibition Kunstwelten im Dialog. Von Gauguin zur globalen Gegenwart. Dziewior's texts have appeared regularly in "Artforum" (New York), "Camera Austria" (Graz), and "Texte zur Kunst" (Berlin). He has published over 50 books and catalogs on 20th and 21st century art and has written catalog essays for institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Sergio Edelsztein (*1956, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a freelance curator based in Berlin and Tel Aviv.
In 1995, Edelsztein founded the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv and was its Director and Chief Curator until 2018. As part of the CCA, he curated seven performance art biennials (under the title Blurrr) and five international video art biennials (VideoZone). Edelsztein curated the Israeli component of the 24th São Paulo Biennale in 1998 and the Israeli pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 2005 and 2013. Since 1995 he has curated exhibitions and time-based events in Spain, China, Poland, Singapore, and various other locations. Among the most important exhibitions he has curated for the CCA are solo exhibitions by Guy Ben Ner, Roee Rosen, Yael Bartana, Marina Abramović, Christian Jankowski, Rosa Barba, Ceal Floyer, Gary Hill, and many others. Edelsztein gives lectures, presents video programs, and publishes texts in Israel, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Austria, Germany, China, the USA, Switzerland, and Argentina and writes for international catalogs, websites, and publications.
N'Goné Fall (*1967, Dakar, Senegal) graduated with honor from the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, France. She is an independent curator and cultural policies specialist.
She was the Editorial Director of the Paris-based contemporary African art magazine Revue Noire from 1994 to 2001. She edited An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century (Revue Noire / DAP 2002); Photographers from Kinshasa (Revue Noire 2001); Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography: a century of African photographers (Revue Noire 1998).
She was guest curator of the 2001 Bamako and 2002 Dakar biennales. She curated exhibitions in Africa, Europe, and the USA including When Things Fall Apart: Critical Voices on the Radars at the Trapholt Museum in Denmark in 2016, and In Quest of Freedom, carte blanche to El Anatsui (Ghana) at the Conciergerie in Paris, France, in 2021.
She is the author of strategic plans and evaluation reports for foundations and international organizations in The Netherlands, Belgium, France, USA, Senegal, South Africa, Barbados, and South Korea.
She has been a Professor at the Senghor University in Alexandria, Egypt (2007–2011); lecturer at the Michaelis School of Arts in Cape Town South, Africa (2017) and at the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey in Niger (2018).
In 2018, N'Goné Fall was appointed by the French President Emmanuel Macron General Commissioner of the Africa2020 Season, a series of more than 1,500 cultural, scientific, and pedagogical events held in 210 cities all over France from December 2020 to September 2021.
Gridthiya Gaweewong (*1964, Chiang Rai, Thailand) is Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Together with Rirkrit Tiravanija, she directed the Thailand Biennale 2023/2024 in Chiang Rai.
Gridthiya Gaweewong is one of the best-known curators working in Southeast Asia today. After earning her Master of Arts in Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996, Gridthiya co-founded the alternative art space Project 304 with Montien Boonma, Kamol Phaosavasdi, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1996–2003). Next to her role as Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok she is Guest Curator of the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai. She co-founded the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1997–2007). Her curatorial projects address issues of social change faced by artists from Thailand and beyond since the Cold War, including Imagined Borders, the 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018), Missing Links, Bangkok (2015), Between Utopia and Dystopia, Mexico City (2011), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Oberhausen (2009), Politics of Fun, Berlin (2005), and Underconstruction Tokyo (2000–2002). Gaweewong is the Curator of the ICI traveling exhibition Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Serenity in Madness in Chiang Mai, Manila, Hong Kong, Chicago, Oklahoma, and Taipei (2016–2020).
Mami Kataoka is Director of the Mori Art Museum.
Mami Kataoka was Chief Curator at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (1997–2002) and joined the Mori Art Museum in 2003, taking on the role of Director in 2020. She has also taken on the position of Director of the National Center for Art Research since April 2023.
Kataoka has held positions at the Hayward Gallery in London from 2007 to 2009 as International Curator; she has also acted as Co-Artistic Director for the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), Artistic Director for the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018), and Artistic Director for the Aichi Triennale 2022. Kataoka served as a Board Member (2014–2022) and the President (2020–2022) of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art).
At Mori Art Museum, she has curated a number of mid-career survey shows of Asian artists including Tsuyoshi Ozawa (2004), Ai Weiwei (2009), Lee Bul (2012), Makoto Aida (2012), Lee Mingwei (2014) , NS Harsha (2017), and Chiharu Shiota (2019) while co-curating regional shows including SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now (2017) and Roppongi Crossing: Contemporary Japanese Art in 2004 and 2013.
Kataoka frequently writes on contemporary art from Japan, Asia, and beyond, gives lectures, and participates on juries.
Yasmil Raymond is an independent curator, currently living in Frankfurt am Main.
Raymond was previously Director, Portikus and Rector of Städelschule between 2020 and 2024. Prior roles include Associate Curator in Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015–2019; Curator at Dia Art Foundation, New York, 2009–2015, and Associate Curator in Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2004–2009. Over the past twenty years, she has been working with several international artists and served on the board of various foundations. She is currently a trustee of the Teiger Foundation, Dia Art Foundation, the Stephen Antonakos Foundation, and A.R.T. (Art Resources Transfer), all based in New York. Major exhibitions include the retrospective of Kara Walker, a monographic survey of Jean-Luc Moulène's work and Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument. Her most recent exhibition Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE for MoMA PS1, co-curated with Ruba Katrib, is on view at Luma Foundation, Arles, France. Raymond holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
