Curatorial Team
Barrie Mowatt
Curator, Open Air and Residencies
Barrie Mowatt has a long and accomplished history as an entrepreneur and philanthropist, beginning with the establishment of the Buschlen Mowatt Fine Art Gallery in 1979. Barrie is the visionary behind the Vancouver Biennale, where he combines his passion for art, education and community service in exhibitions that bring great art to public spaces where people live, work, play and transit, free for all to enjoy, explore and be inspired by. Barrie is also the founder of the Celebration of Hope Foundation, Taste the Nation, and the Buschlen Mowatt Scholarship Program at Arts Umbrella. He is the recipient of the Vancouver Business in Arts Award.
Marcello Dantas
Senior Curator (Latin and South America; Asia-Pacific) Open Air Museum
Curator and documentarist, Marcello Dantas organized exhibitions including the award-winning “Still Being” exhibition, by British artist Antony Gormley, which took place in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. He was also responsible for the public art event “OiR – Other ideas for Rio” (2012), which included works by Robert Morris, Brian Eno and Ryoiji Ikeda, installed in iconic open-air locations in Rio de Janeiro. In 2015, the project had its second edition entitled “OiR-Intra,” with artworks by Daniel Buren and Song Dong, followed by “OiR-Play” in 2016, which brought together works by Leandro Erlich, AVAF and Mana Bernardes, and “Other Ideas” in 2017, with artworks by Makoto Azuma and Daniel Arsham.
Dantas has curated exhibitions including “ComCiência”, by Patricia Piccinini; “Inoculation”, by Ai Weiwei, the first exhibition of the Chinese artist on the continent, held in Argentina, Chile and Brazil; “Invento: The Revolutions that Invented Us”; “CRU [RAW]: Food, transformation and art”; “CICLO – Creating with what we have,” which brought together 15 artists from around the world, including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Joana Vasconcelos, Ryan Gander, Pedro Reyes, to work with the idea of appropriation; “Pesant Da Vincis” by the Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang; “Boltanski 19.924.458 +/-” by the French artist Christian Boltanski; “Bossa na Oca”; “Roberto Carlos – 50 years of music,” among others. He also curated solo exhibitions with Anish Kapoor, Jenny Holzer, Gary Hill, Tino Sehgal, Peter Greenaway, Rebecca Horn, Bill Viola and Laurie Anderson, and international projects including Vancouver Biennale 2014, the Museum of the Caribbean in Barranquilla (Colombia), the “Pelé Station” in Berlin, during the World Cup in Germany, and the Brazil Pavilion at Expo Shanghai 2010.
Jeffrey Uslip
Senior Curator (North America) Open Air Museum
New York-based curator Jeffrey Uslip has organized exhibitions with some of the most innovative, diverse and challenging artists of our time. While serving as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs / Chief Curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Uslip curated solo exhibitions with Hurvin Anderson, Mark Bradford and Lisa Yuskavage. In addition, he curated projects with Jesse Howard, one of Missouri’s seminal self-taught artists; a survey with Los Angeles-based artist Joe Goode; and organized the museum debuts of Laurie Simmons’s series Two Boys and The Love Doll and Katharina Frisch’s Postcards. At CAM, Uslip commissioned a monumental painting by Barnaby Furnas titled The Last Flood, curated the first solo museum exhibitions with mid career artists Arcangelo Sassolino and Mark Flood, and presented the first solo museum exhibitions with emerging artists Wyatt Kahn, Jon Rafman and Liat Yossifor. In 2016, Uslip curated Kelley Walker: Direct Drive, the artist’s most comprehensive survey in America to date.
From 2010-13, Uslip served as the Curator-at-Large of the Santa Monica Museum of Art where he organized Joyce Pensato: I KILLED KENNY; Michael Queenland: Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders; Agnes Denes: Body Prints, Philosophical Drawings, and Map Projections, 1969–1978; Kianja Strobert: Nothing To Do But Keep Going; Xylor Jane: Sealegs; and Keltie Ferris: Doomsday Boogie Woogie.
Uslip also organized exhibitions for PS1/MoMA; Artists Space; Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; California State University, Los Angeles; and LA><ART, Los Angeles and is an advanced PhD candidate at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where he is completing his dissertation titled “Mourning in America: Cady Noland and the Age of Reagan.”
Michael Suh (Duozhuang Su)
Senior Curator for Asia
Michael Suh carries years of experience as Executive Director for the Museum of Contemporary Art Beijing. Other prominent positions include founder and director of the vibrARTion Project, Deputy Director for International Coordination, China Sculpture Institute, ISC Member of International Committee, KAO (Kinetic Art Organization) Executive Director for China. Major activities include Beijing Olympic Sculpture Project, Yuzi Paradise International Sculpture Project (one of the first sculpture projects involving international artists to work in China for larger sculpture commissions), NordArt China Pavilion for Chinese Cultural Year in Germany, Forms of the Formless: Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art, A Passage to the Alps: Chinese Artists in St. Urban and “Critical Connections” celebrating the 65th Anniversary of China-Switzerland Partnerships.
Michael Suh is currently Guest Professor at the Guangxi Normal University School of Fine Arts.
Advisors
Rakhi Sarkar
Curatorial Advisor, Open Air Museum and International Artist Residencies
Director and founder of the Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA), Kolkata India
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Curatorial Advisor, Open Air Museum
Director International Programmes, Serpentine Gallery, London
Steve Nash
Curatorial Advisor, Open Air Museum
Former Excutive Director of The Palm Springs Art Museum, former Chief Curator Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Texas.
Zheng Shengtian
Curatorial Advisor, Open Air
Adjunct Director at Institute of Asian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery and Managing Editor of Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.
Ilko Davidov
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Director, Chicago Movies and Music Festival (CIMMFest).
Ted Grouya
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Director and Founder American Documentary Film Festival (AmDocs).
Marek Hovorka
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Director and Founder Czech International Film Festival Jilhava , Czech Republic.
Inti Codera
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Director Mexico City International Documentary and Film Festival (DOCSDF)
Rene Rozon
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Founder and Director Montreal World Festival of Films (FFM).
Andre Vaillancourt
Curatorial Advisor, Biennale CineFest
Production Director Montreal World Festival of Films (FFM).
Helmut Batista
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Director Capacete International Residency Programme, Rio de Janeiro.
Alexandre Gabriel
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Artistic director, Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, Brazil.
Sarah Fillmore
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Senior Curator, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Co-chair of the Sobey Art Award, Halifax Nova Scotia.
Dieter Rolstraete
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Curator, Chicago Contemporary Museum
Bruce Johnson
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Curator of The Rooms Art Gallery, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Paul Walde
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Curator LOLA , London, Ontario, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Victoria, Canada
Richard Ingleby
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Director Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
Toby Webster
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Director The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland
Pooja Sood
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Director, KHOJ, New Delhi, India
Bose Krishnamachari
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Co-Founder and Director Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India
Basma El Husseiny
Curatorial Advisor, International Artist Residencies
Managing Director of Cultural Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafy), Cairo Egypt