Professor Sarat Maharaj is chief curator of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2011 with the theme Pandemonium: Art in a Time of ‘Creativity Fever’.
Sarat Maharaj works in a curatorial team consisting of Dorothee Albrecht, Stina Edblom and Gertrud Sandqvist. The overall theme Pandemonium: Art in a Time of ‘Creativity Fever’ constitutes the starting-point for the curatorial process taking off in December 2010. During the spring of 2011, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art will arrange open seminars and workshops leading up to the opening on September 10, 2011.
Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art is held September 10 – November 13, 2011.
While Röda Sten is the main exhibition venue, the 2011 biennial will also take place at Göteborgs Konsthall and Göteborgs Konstmuseum. The planning of other exhibition venues and the upcoming program will continue in 2011.
Sarat Maharaj is currently Professor of Visual Art and Knowledge Systems at Lund University, Sweden and Visiting Research Professor at Goldsmiths College, London. Maharaj is born and raised in South Africa. In 1980 he started his doctoral studies in History of Arts at Goldsmiths College, where he later came to hold a position as Professor of History of Arts and Art theory until 2005. The title of his thesis is The Dialectic of Modernism and Mass Culture: Studies in Post War British Art. Maharaj has published several central texts concerning the postcolonial condition of cultural difference and translation, as for art as knowledge production. In 2010 Sarat Maharaj has been appointed co-curator of the 29th São Paolo Biennial. In the course of commitments, he was co-curator of the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial 2008 on the theme ‘Farewell to Postcolonialism’ as for Dokumenta XI in Kassel 2002 together with Okwui Enwezor. Maharaj is a board member of the European art biennal Manifesta.
Dorothee Albrecht is an artist and assistant curator of the 29th São Paulo Biennial. Albrecht is one of the funders of UNWETTER, Kunsthalle Berlin-Lichtenberg and Dreams of Art Spaces Collected. Albrecht has a Masters degree in Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. During 2008 she worked as assistant curator of the 3rd Gungzhou Triennial in 2008. Albrecht lives and works in Berlin.
Stina Edblom currently holds the position as exhibition curator at Göteborg Konsthall and as assisting curator of the 29th São Paulo Biennial. Focusing on African contemporary art, she worked as assistant curator of the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, 2008, under the theme Farewell to Postcolonialism. Stina Edblom has a Masters degree in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmith College, London. In 2011 she will work full time with the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.
Gertrud Sandqvist is Professor in Theory and History of Ideas in Visual Art at Malmö Art Academy at Lund University, Sweden. She is currently one of three co-curator at The Moderna Exhibition at Moderna Museet 2010. Sandqvist has been working as an art critic since 1980 at a wide selection of art journals, amongst them Paletten (1981-84). Between 1995 and 2007, Gertrud Sandqvist was the Director and responsible for the Theory program at Malmö Art Academy. She has written several texts for catalogues and anthologies on Nordic and International Contemporary Art.
