Witte de With in Rotterdam appoints Defne Ayas as new Director

Witte de With in Rotterdam appoints Defne Ayas as new Director

The board of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, announces the appointment of Defne Ayas as its new director, effective from 1st January 2012.  Defne Ayas will succeed Nicolaus Schafhausen, who has been director since early 2006.

Istanbul native Defne Ayas heads to Rotterdam from New York, where she has served as a curator of Performa – the visual art performance biennial of New York City – since 2004, and from Shanghai, where she has acted as a co-founding director of Arthub Asia – a contemporary art initiative devoted to art creation and exchange across Asia– since 2007. Ayas was also a faculty member of contemporary art and new media at the New York University in Shanghai for the past five years.

Prior to joining Arthub Asia and Performa, she coordinated the New York-based New Museum of Contemporary Art’s public and new media programming. Ayas has recently served as a curatorial advisor to the 8th Shanghai Biennale, and as a publication advisor to the 8th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) in 2010. Defne Ayas completed De Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam and received her Masters degree from ITP – Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Defne Ayas will stay involved with Performa, Arthub Asia, as well as with Blind Dates Project, an artistic platform dedicated to tackling what remains of the legacy and rupture of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1923), of which she is a founding co-curator.

Source: http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/10087