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documenta 16, 2027

Kassel, Germany

12 June - 19 September 2027


Finding Committee for documenta 16

Finding Committee resigned

On November 16, 2023, documenta announced that the remaining four members of the selection committee, Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg and María Inés Rodríguez, have now also resigned. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger and Ranjit Hoskoté had previously resigned.
documenta press release

On 30 March 2023, the Supervisory Board at documenta gGmbH appointed the Finding Committee for documenta 16: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Gong Yan, Ranjit Hoskoté, Simon Njami, Kathrin Rhomberg, and María Inés Rodríguez.

The Finding Committee has the task of inviting pioneering figures in contemporary art to apply to take on the role of Artistic Direction of documenta 16, and to select the most promising format from the concepts presented. The appointment of the Artistic Direction is targeted for late 2023 / early 2024.

In appointing the Committee, the Supervisory Board is following the proposal of former documenta Artistic Directors who were entrusted with this task in November 2022: Catherine David (documenta 10, 1997), Roger M. Buergel (documenta 12, 2007), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (documenta 13, 2012), and Adam Szymczyk (documenta 14, 2017).


About the members of the Finding Committee:

Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger

Painter, visual artist, philosopher, psychoanalyst and a groundbreaking theorist whose Matrixial theory has impacted the contemporary fields of ethics and aesthetics, critical studies, art theory and art history, film and literary studies, and feminism for more than three decades now.
Based in Tel Aviv and Paris, her artworks have been presented at major museums of contemporary art worldwide, including Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Istanbul Biennial (2015), "Face à l'Histoire" (1996) and "ELLES" (2011) both at Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Currently she participates in "Artists in a Time of War at Castello di Rivoli", Turin, where she also presents a solo show in parallel. Her books include: "Régard et éspace-de-bord matrixiels" (1999), "The Matrixial Borderspace" (2006), "Proto-ética matricial" (2019), "Matrixial Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Ethics: 1990-2000" (2020).

Gong Yan

Graduated from Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Art, Paris, professor at Shanghai Institute of Visual Art and former Chief-Editor of Art World magazine. Since 2013 she has been the director of Power Station of Art. Gong Yan lives in Shanghai.
While still an artist at the 6th Shanghai Biennale in 2006, she moved into the curatorial field and had curated exhibitions such as "Ordinary Architecture" – The Chinese Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Venice Biennale (2012, together with Yong-ho Chang and A Cheng), "Shinohara Kazuo" (2014), "Mobile Architecture: Yona Friedman" (2015), "Snacks" (2016), "PSA Collection Series Yu Youhan" (2017), "PSA Collection Series Li Shan" (2017), "Body Media" (2007 and 2017), "HON: Niki de Saint Phalle & Shen Yuan" (2018), "Hussein Chalayan: Archipelago" (2021/2022).

Ranjit Hoskoté

A writer, cultural theorist, art critic and curator, based in Mumbai, India. Hoskoté is the author of more than 30 books, including volumes of poetry, art criticism, cultural history, translation, and edited anthologies. His curatorial projects include the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), which he co-curated with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, and the first-ever national pavilion of India at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). In 2023 Hoskoté will be part of the Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Simon Njami

A Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic, and novelist. Njami was co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire. He was artistic director of the first Johannesburg Art Fair (2008), the Bamako Photography Biennial, the Dak'Art Biennial (2016/2018), and the São Paulo Biennial. He was co-curator of the first African Pavilion at the 52th Venice Biennale (2007).
Njami has curated numerous exhibitions including "Africa Remix" (2004/2007), "The Divine Comedy" at MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, "SCAD" in Savannah (both 2014) and "The Smithsonian" in Washington DC (2015), "Xenopolis" in Berlin (2015), "After Eden, The Artur Walther Collection" in Paris (2015), "Metropolis" and "I is another" (both in Rome 2018), "The Studio" as part of the Kampala Biennale 2019, "This space between us" in Las Palmas (2020) and "Materia Prima" in San Giminiano (2021).

Kathrin Rhomberg

She is a curator and headed the exhibition office of Secession in Vienna from 1990 to 2001 and the Kölnischer Kunstverein from 2002 to 2007. Since 2014 she has been chairwoman of the board of the Trägerverein der Kontakt Sammlung and its artistic director. She curated, among others, Roman Ondak for the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), the 6th Berlin Biennale (2010), Petrit Halilaj for the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and co-curated, among others, Manifesta 3, Ljubljana (2000) and "Projekt Migration", Cologne, (2002-2006).
Kathrin Rhomberg lives in Vienna and teaches also there at the University of Applied Arts.

María Inés Rodríguez

A curator who lives and works in São Paulo and Paris. From 2009 to 2011 she was chief curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon (MUSAC) in Spain.
Between 2011 and 2013, Rodríguez was Chief Curator at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, where she directed the exhibitions, collection, and public programs. Between 2014 and 2018, Rodríguez was director of the CAPC Musée d'art contemporain in Bordeaux. Since 2018, María Inés Rodríguez has been Curator-At-Large for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP).


From documenta press information, 30 March, 2023.
© Photo on top: Haupt & Binder, universes.art

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Like for all editions since 1997, Universes in Universe will publish a Special about documenta 16. In the meantime, see:
documenta Special 2022

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