CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES
Grace Aneiza Ali is a Guyanese-born curator-scholar of contemporary art of the Global South, whose work explores the intersections of art and migration. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Art History at Florida State University and is the 2024 – 25 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at The Huntington. Her book, Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora, explores the art and migration narratives of women of Guyanese heritage. Ali serves as the editor-in-chief of the College Art Association’ s Art Journal Open and is a member of the board of advisors for British Art Studies.
Christian Bendayán is a self-taught artist whose work has strengthened Amazonian values and aesthetics in Peruvian culture. In 2019 he represented Peru at the 58th Venice Biennale and he has participated in major biennials across Latin America. His art reinterprets the Amazonian landscape, denounces violence against Indigenous and trans communities, and critiques environmental destruction and transculturation. A key promoter of Amazonian art, he has curated over fifty projects highlighting Indigenous, popular, and riverine artists. The former director of the National Institute of Culture of Loreto, he received the National Culture Prize and founded Bufeo. Amazon + Art to reclaim the river as a space for creativity.
Keyna Eleison is a curator, writer, researcher, griot heiress and shaman, narrator, singer, ancestral chronicler, and cultural manager. She holds an M. A. degree in art history and a specialist degree in history and architecture from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro( PUC-Rio) and a B. A. degree in philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro( UFRJ). She is a member of the African Heritage Commission for the laureation of the Cais do Valongo region as a World Heritage Site( UNESCO). She served as manager of all the cultural centers in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro between 2015 and 2017 and pedagogical coordinator of the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage between 2018 and 2019. She was the curator of the 10th SIART International Biennial in Bolivia and the artistic director of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro( MAM Rio) between 2020 and 2023, as well as the curator of the 1st Amazon Biennial in 2023. She is currently a columnist for Contemporary And, the director of research and content for the Amazon Biennial, and an at-large cocurator of the 36th São Paulo Biennial. She works in the development of exhibitions and the meanings of works of art and artists, as well as guiding artistic processes, curating exhibitions, teaching art, and coordinating art education and narrative to pass on and capture oral knowledge.
Elvira Espejo Ayca is a prominent Indigenous artist, cultural administrator, and researcher. Born in the Qaqachaka ayllu( Eduardo Abaroa Province, Oruro, Bolivia), her practice is linked to textiles, oral tradition, and poetry. With countless publications to her name, she is the director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore( MUSEF) in La Paz. She received the 2020 Goethe Medal, an official award of the Federal Republic of Germany, for her work and commitment to cultural exchange. The importance of her work lies in the dialogue between the practice and knowledge of Indigenous communities and their intersection with academia, cultural management, and museums.
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