Bio

Saskia de Ville holds two Masters degrees (musicology and cultural management) and is also a graduate in television journalism from the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme in Lille. She started her career in radio and television at RTBF (2009-2014). In 2016, she was dramaturge at the Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence and then moved to Paris where she took over the reins of the France Musique morning show (2016-2019) while joining ARTE as presenter of classical concert and opera broadcasts. The 2020/2021 season will take place on France Musique, on Arte and in print. It also sees the release of a MOOC on 17th century French music (in partnership with the Sorbonne, the Louvre Museum, the Ambronay Cultural Encounter Centre and the Ensemble Correspondances) and a series of native podcasts Les Zinstrus which invite children to discover how musical instruments work. A series written by Saskia de Ville, with Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Florence Foresti, Alex Vizorek, Laetitia Dosch etc. in the role of instruments.

A visual artist, filmmaker, and storyteller, Korakrit Arunanondchai (b.1986, Bangkok; lives and works between New York and Bangkok) employs his versatile practice to tell stories embedded in cultural transplantation and hybridity. His body of work merges fiction with poetry and offers synesthetic experiences engaged in a multitude of subjects primarily based on lives of family, friends, and colleagues as much as local myths. His major institutional solo shows include MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Kiasma, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and S.M.A.K, among others. His work has been included at the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennale, and Dhaka Art Summit. Korakrit’s work is currently on view at Kunsthall Trondheim and Fundação de Serralves. Upcoming shows include Migros Museum, Zurich and Kunstverein Hamburg. 

Diana Campbell Betancourt is a Princeton educated American curator who has been working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. She is committed to fostering a transnational art world, and her plural and long-range vision addresses the concerns of underrepresented regions and artists alongside the more established in manifold forums. Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions. Campbell Betancourt has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, also adding a scholarly element to the platform with a think tank connecting modern art histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia in collaboration with the Getty Foundation, Cornell University Center for Comparative Modernities, the Asia Art Archive, and the Samdani Art Foundation. In addition to her exhibitions making practice, Campbell Betancourt is responsible for developing the Samdani Art Foundation collection and drives its international collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s permanent home, Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet. Concurrent to her work in Bangladesh from 2016-2018, Campbell Betancourt was also the Founding Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines, a non-profit international residency and exhibition programme with sites in Manila and Bataan, and curated Frieze Projects in London for the 2018 and 2019 editions of the fair. She chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room and is an advisor to AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged artistic practices. Her writing has been published by Mousse, Frieze, Art in America, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) among others.

Lisette Lagnado (b. 1961 in Kinshasa, Congo R.D.C.) is a researcher, art critic, and independent Curator, holding a Master in Communication and Semiotics and a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidade de São Paulo. She was one of the curators of the 11th Berlin Biennale (2019-2020) and chief curator of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo How to Live Together (2006). She curated Drifts and Derivations: Experiences, journeys and morphologies, together with María Berríos (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010), among other exhibitions. From 2014 until 2017, Lagnado was director and Curator of Public Programs of the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. Lagnado holds a grant by the Goethe Institut Rio de Janeiro to conduct a research at selected museums in Germany, focusing on different topics related to decolonization and is currently teaching in the Program As part of a journey at Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

An Afrofeminist activist, Fania Noël-Thomassaint is currently a PhD candidate in sociology at The New School for Social Research in New York, her fields of research are Africana & Black Studies, critical race theories, the Haitian diaspora and migration movements from Haiti, capitalism studies, as well as Black, Caribbean and materialist feminisms. Since 2015 she has been the editor of the political journal on intersectionality, AssiégéEs, which she co-founded. In 2019 her Afro-communautaire : Appartenir à nous-mêmes is published by Editions Syllepse.

Mireille-Tsheusi Robert has been a decolonial, deracial and feminist trainer and author since 1999. After a career as an educator of vulnerable teenagers, she became president of the Bamko association, a women's committee for equality and racial equity. She holds a master's degree in education (Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve) and has co-authored 6 books between 2013 and 2020. Her favourite themes are the impact of racism on children, discrimination against racialised groups, the decolonial work of remembrance and reparation, the representativeness and media representation of minorities, particularly women, and the training of social actors in contact with vulnerable groups. Ms Robert is at the origin of decolonial and innovative projects in Belgium.

Sarah Diedro Jordão is a communications strategist, anti-racist activist, intersectional feminist moderator and podcast producer. Her latest podcast creation "Reclaiming our Joy" refocuses on the joy of Black women and non-binary people as an act of resistance. A former youth ambassador for the UN Women office in Singapore and currently an expert advisor on intersectionality for the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, she has facilitated various workshops around racial and social justice for organisations and NGOs, and has moderated conversations with artists, activists and intellectuals from the African diaspora for cultural institutions in Brussels.

Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948) is a poet, activist, sound and visual artist. Born in Chile, Vicuña coined the term “Arte Precario” (precarious art) in the mid 60s. Her work is in the collections of MoMA, New York, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; and MALBA, Buenos Aires. Vicuña is a founding member of Artists for Democracy. She has authored 27 volumes of art and poetry. Her most recent titles are New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña, Kelsey Street Press, 2018, and Cruz del Sur, Lumen, Chile 2021.

Sonali Gupta is a PhD candidate in Biophysics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her doctoral research investigates genetic circuit design principles for encoding various information processing functions in microbes. Her work seeks to integrate the technical, the political, and the metaphysical. Recent publications can be found in Nature Communications and e-Flux.

Rolando Vázquez is a teacher and decolonial thinker. He is regularly invited to deliver keynotes on decoloniality at academic and cultural institutions. Vázquez is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Roosevelt and Cluster Chair at the University College Utrecht. Since 2010, he co-directs with Walter Mignolo the annual Maria Lugones Decolonial Summer School, now hosted by the Van Abbemuseum. In 2016, under the direction of Gloria Wekker, he co-authored the report "Let’s do Diversity" of the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission. Vázquez's work places the question of the possibility of an ethical life at the core of decolonial thought and advocates for the decolonial transformation of cultural and educational institutions. His most recent publication is "Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary" (Mondriaan Fund 2020).

Amanda Piña. Mexican-Chilean-Austrian artist and cultural worker living between Vienna and Mexico City. Her work is concerned with the decolonisation of art, focusing on the political and social power of movement. Her works are contemporary rituals for temporarily dismantling the ideological separations between modern and traditional, the human, the animal and the vegetal, nature and culture. Amanda Piña is interested in making art beyond the idea of a product and in developing new frameworks for the creation of meaningful experiences. Her pieces have been presented in renowned art institutions such as Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, MUMOK Museum of Modern Art, TQW and ImpulsTanz Festival, in Vienna. DeSingel Antwerpen,STUK Leuven, Buda Kortrijk, Beursschouwburg Brussels, Royal festival Hall London, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Tanz NRW, Düsseldorf and HAU, Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, NAVE and Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil in Chile. Since 2008 she leads the gallery space specialized in expanded choreography and performance nadaLokal in Vienna which she founded together with the Swiss Visual Artist Daniel Zimmermann. Currently works on the realisation of the long-term project Endangered Human Movements dedicated to movements and cultural practices that have already vanished or are threatened with extinction. Four volumes of research in the scope of this project have been already realised which include performances, Installations, Videos, publications, curatorial frames, workshop and lectures.

Adeola Naomi Aderemi is a multilingual, multilocal, AfroGreek, and multi-format artist, scholar, curator, and healer. She received her Masters of Science in Public Health at Birmingham City University. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of  Distinguished Diva. She is currently working on her debut documentary film on the lives and lived experiences of Greeks of African descent (AfroGreek). She utilises the integration of holistic healing practices in policy spaces and culture, as well as uses modalities of care available on issues around Black women’s liberation, gender justice, women's health, and equal representation for voices of women of African descent in global media. Her work in various mediums has been featured in publications such as Women Under Siege, New York Times, Ms. Magazine, New Museum New York, Forbes, E-flux, Elle, and Vogue.

Samah Hijawi is an artist and researcher currently doing her PhD in Art Practice at Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Académie Royale Des Beaux Art de Bruxelles, in Belgium. In her multi-media works she is exploring the aesthetics of representation in artworks that allude to the histories of Palestine. Her works have been shown in The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Museum M, The Hayward Gallery, BOZAR, Beurscchouwburg, Bureau Europa, MoMa, Apex Art, Darat al Funun, among others. She previously collaborated with Ola El-Khalidi and Diala Khasawneh in directing Makan Art Space (2003-2016), an independent space for contemporary art in Amman. And together with Shuruq Harb and Toleen Touq she co-curated the platform The River has Two Banks (2012-2017), initiated to address the growing distance between Jordan and Palestine.

Shuruq Harb is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in Ramallah. Her artistic practice focuses on online visual culture and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. She is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award (2019) which produced her most recent film The Jump, currently on display at Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. Her upcoming solo exhibition at Beirut Art Center opens in June 2021.