Christov-Bakargiev heads next documenta
Documenta has named Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev the Artistic Director of documenta 13, which will take place in Kassel, Germany, in 2012. Christov-Bakargiev is Chief Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin; before, from 1999–2001, she was Senior Curator of Exhibitions at P.S.1, New York. The international finding committee of nine included Kathy Halbreich of MoMA, Udo Kittelmann the new director of the Berlin National Galleries and Hamburger Bahnhof, and Manuel J. Borja-Villel of Reina Sofia, Madrid.
After documenta 12, curated by Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack with great ambition but also undeniable flaws in conceptual and practical realisation, the vote seems to have settled on a figure who has already proven she can master the large-scale survey beast. Christov-Bakargiev curated the Biennale of Sydney 2008, an exhibition of more than 180 artists, encompassing avant-garde genealogies from Constructivism through Gutai to Arte Povera, as well as current works by artists such as Renata Lucas or Sam Durant. According to Max Delany writing in the September issue of frieze, Christov-Bakargiev ‘s Biennale ‘was a tour de force, comprising dizzying discursive loops and spiralling trajectories of avant-garde aesthetics and political reprisals. […] Christov-Bakargiev brilliantly marshalled artists and theorists to rethink the terms of “revolution”, agency and effect, and ways that contemporary art might activate new modes of critical understanding and revolutionary potential.’ (read the whole review here)
(here’s the official documenta press-release, and a profile of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev from the Sydney Morning Herald)
