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Kathryn Weir
Folakunle Oshun
A curator and writer based in Paris and Naples, Kathryn Weir was named artistic director of the Madre museum of contemporary art in 2019. Current and recent curatorial projects include ‘Rethinking Nature’ (16 December 2021 – 2 May 2022, Madre museum of contemporary art, Naples), ‘Utopia Dystopia: the myth of progress seen from the South’ (at the Madre until 17 February 2022) and ‘Collective Body’ (at Dhaka Art Summit 2020). She was previously director of multidisciplinary programs at the Centre Pompidou, and created ‘Cosmopolis’ there in 2015 as a platform for research-based, socially engaged and collaborative practices that reconfigure art’s histories and geographies. She also established the annual festival ‘MOVE: performance, dance, moving image’ in 2017. From 2006-14, at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, she was chief curator of contemporary international art, directed the Australian Cinémathèque, and was a member of the curatorium of the 5th, 6th and 7th Asia Pacific Triennials, as well as leading the major project ‘21st Century: art in the first decade’ (2010-2011). Her curatorial and writing practice engages with critical thinking on technology, race, class, gender and political ecology.
Folakunle Oshun is an artist and curator from Lagos, Nigeria. His practice engages the relativity of forms and the mapping of orbits and unorthodox spaces. His most recent sculptural work is a gravity-defying masterpiece titled Museum of Hope exhibited in 2021 at the historic Berliner Dom Cathedral.
He is the founder and director of the Lagos Biennial, a platform for critical dialogue and the development of contemporary art. His research and curatorial interests lie in investigating the historical, cultural, and political dynamics of architectural monuments in relation to the art object.
In 2017 he was selected as the first recipient of the Curator-in-Residence grant by the Potsdam City Council, Brandenburg, Germany (2017/2018) where he made the film "Potsdam is Potsdam". In 2020, Folakunle was invited to reflect on the modern and contemporary art collection of Pinakothek der Moderne, where he co-curated a group exhibition titled "LOOK AT THIS" along with Bernhart Schwenk after a one year research period.
In October 2021, Folakunle was invited to the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HfG) as a Guest Professor where he teaches the course "Spatial Politics and Story Telling". He holds a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts with a major in Sculpture (2007) and a Master's degree in Art History (2012) from the University of Lagos. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy where he also lectures.
