Curator appointed for 2012 Berlin Biennale

7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2012

Artur Żmijewski appointed curator

KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin is pleased to announce that Artur Żmijewski has been appointed curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.
The 7th Berlin Biennale will take place in early 2012.

Visual artist Artur Żmijewski, born in 1966 in Warsaw (Poland), works almost exclusively with the media of photography and film. He is particularly interested in the power of art and its relation to politics. From an almost anthropological viewpoint he investigates social norms, morality and representations of power in today’s society and the effects that art have on it. Żmijewski studied in the sculpture class of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski at the Warsaw Art Academy from 1990 to 1995 as well as at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 1999. His work has been internationally shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2005 he represented Poland at the 51st Art Biennale in Venice. He is member of the Polish political movement "Krytyka Polityczna" and the art director of the magazine of the same name. Żmijewski lives and works in Warsaw.

The selection committee for the curatorship of the 7th Berlin Biennale consisted of Jacob Fabricius, Malmö Konsthall; Bartomeu Mari, MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Matthias Mühling, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Munich; Joanna Mytkowska, The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; and Hoor Al Qasimi, Sharjah Biennial.

The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is since its 4th edition one of the institutions supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as "outstanding cultural event". The support of 2.5 Million Euro per edition ensures that Berlin’s "most important event for contemporary art" enjoys planning stability, enabling the organizers to address issues of content in an experimental way.

Established in 1998, the Berlin Biennale has become a major international event for contemporary art. Located in Berlin, in the midst of the vibrant cultural scene in the fast-changing capital of Germany, the Berlin Biennale has received an enthusiastic response from the audience as an experimental, forward-looking and contextual show. The six editions of the Berlin Biennale that have taken place to date explored a variety of exhibition formats and involved diverse curatorial agendas. Previous curators have been:
1st Berlin Biennale (1998): Klaus Biesenbach with Nancy Spector and Hans Ulrich Obrist
2nd Berlin Biennale (2001): Saskia Bos
3rd Berlin Biennale (2004): Ute Meta Bauer
4th Berlin Biennale (2006): Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick
5th Berlin Biennale (2008): Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic
6th Berlin Biennale (2010): Kathrin Rhomberg


The Berlin Biennale is organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.


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Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
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D-10117 Berlin

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