MDE 2015: Curatorial Team

From left to right: Fernando Esobar, Sharon Lerner, Edi Muka, Nydia Gutiérrez, Tony Evanko.

Artistic Direction

Nydia Gutiérrez: Born in Venezuela and based in Medellín, Nydia is an arquitect from the Pontifical Xavierian University (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) in Bogotá, Colombia. She is also a museologist from the JKF University in San Franciso, U.S. She is the former chief of curators of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas. She teaches in the Master program of Museology at the National University of Bogotá, Colombia. She has been a curator and museological advisor in some events such as the XIII Meeting of Young Artists with FIA-Caracas; mentor of the 13th Regional Art Exhibition of Colombia, eastern area; responsible for the Regional Meetings Program of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia and the reopening of the North Santander Museum. One of her many publications is The vulnerable individual. Assessment of psychoanalytic notions in the work of Miguel Ángel Rojas. It was a research grant on monographs about Colombian artists of the Ministry of Culture. She is the current chief curator of the Museum of Antioquia.

International curators

Edi Muka: Albanian art critic and curator. He has been commissioning temporary projects at the Public Art Agency in Sweden since 2014. Previously, between 2009 and 2014, he was the curator of Roda Sten konsthall in Gothenburg. Along with Stina Edblom, he worked as artistic director for the Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2013. He is one of the founders and directors of the Tirana International Contemporary Art Biennial as well as the acting director and commissioner of TICA, the Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art. TICA is an independent platform for research and production of contemporary art. In 2007, Tony and Joa Ljungberg curated the fourth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Rethinking Dissent. In 1999, he was also the curator of the collective exhibition Albania Today – The Time of Ironic Optimism, the first booth of Albania in the Venice Biennial. He was commissioned to be part of that booth in 2005.

Sharon Lerner: Peruvian curator of contemporary art at the Lima Art Museum. She was invited by the Goethe-Institut as the only research scholar from Latin America to join the educational team of documenta 12 Kassel, Germany (2007). Along with the curators Xiaoyu Weng and Michele Fiedler, Sharon obtained a grant from Southern Exposure to develop Mission Afterviews, a project going through the stories and architectural transformations of abandoned movie theaters in the Mission District, San Francisco, U.S. (2010), and the 101 Curatorial Fellowship of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. During that time she worked as a researcher for the Kadist Art Foundation..

National curator

Fernando Escobar: Colombian artist and researcher. From his interdisciplinary training in visual arts and social sciences, he has approached several subjects related to contemporary artistic practices, urban cultural practices, folk art, communities and participation from artistic practices. He has co-curated the following exhibitions: ExSitu-InSitu. Moravia, artistic practices in community (Medellín, 2008-2011); Transmissions. 12 Regional Meetings of Artists, central area (Cundinamarca and Boyacá, 2007); the VIII Art Biennial of the Modern Art Museum of Bogotá (2002); and Stumble (Bogotá, 2001). He was also the curatorial coordinator of the exhibition Body, Art, Nature. Contemporary Art in outer spaces at the Botanical Garden of Bogotá (2004), and the curator of Grey City (Bogotá, 2006) and ¡¡¡…from the other world!!! (2005). He is currently a PhD candidate in Urban Studies at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (Azcapotzalco, Mexico DF).

Local curator

Tony Evanko: American artist and arquitect based in Medellín. Since 2006, he has been the director of the Casa Tres Patios Foundation, a contemporary art center in Medellín devoted to experimentation, new artistic proposals and alternative pedagogies. He teaches at the faculty or Arts at the University of Antioquia. He has also taught at the University of Fine Arts in Medellín and the faculty of architecture at the University of New Mexico in the United States. Between 2010 and 2012, he was the representative of the area of New Media in the Visual Arts Council for the Culture Council of Medellín. He was a consultant of the museography team for the Casa de la Memoria Museum of Medellín. His work as an artist is part of some collections in museums and galleries around Europe, the United States and Colombia.