Maria Lind

Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently the director Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna. From 2020 to 2023 she was serving as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden, Moscow. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tensta konsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). From 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein München and in 1998, co-curator of Europe’s itinerant biennial, Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg. In 2015 she curated Future Light for the first Vienna Biennial, and in 2019 she co-curated the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara. She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. Currently she is a lecturer at Konstfack’s CuratorLab. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press, and Seven Years: The Rematerialization Art from 2011 to 2017 appeared in the fall of 2019. In 2021, Konstringar: Vad gör samtidskonsten? was published by Natur & Kultur. Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) and The New Model (2020) are two publications reflecting long-term projects at Tensta konsthall, both published by the art center and Sternberg Press.

A WALK IN THE FOREST

In this presentation, Maria Lind will share her experience as the director in various institutional settings, reflecting on “the curatorial” in terms of situated knowledge locally, regionally and across the planet. She will highlight case studies from Kunstverein Munich, CCS Bard, Tensta konsthall, and Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as working as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden in Moscow. Notions such as displacement, art-centricity, embeddedness, pervasive eclecticism, and the proximity principle will be discussed.