Schafhausen in Bucharest

15/10/2012

PRESS RELEASE

NICOLAUS SCHAFHAUSEN APPOINTED CURATOR FOR BUCHAREST BIENNALE 6

Bucharest-Wien, October 15, 2012

BUCHAREST BIENNALE 6 - Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art - is set for May 23 - July 20, 2014, under the curatorship of Nicolaus Schafhausen, director of Kunsthalle Wien. The appointment also will mark a the first cooperation of BUCHAREST BIENNALE and Kunsthalle Wien which will develop a new type of dialogue between Wien and Bucharest.

Bucharest Biennale promotes awareness and dissemination of the culture, particularly in the fields of the arts, by means of exchanges and cultural cooperation within Europe and beyond and is looking for strategies that would develop mutual understanding and offer insights from different perspectives. BB shows interest in the link between creative practice and social development, in the links between the local, European and global contexts. BUCHAREST BIENNALE aims to operate in a way that demonstrates sensitivity and competence in dealing with the "others" as the "alter" from different cultural backgrounds.

With the successful model imposed by the previous editions, the biennale already established its position within the international scene, as one of the most vital biennials in Europe.

By appointing such a successful and innovative curator as Nicolaus Schafhausen, BUCHAREST BIENNALE will continue its tradition of exploring different ways of engaging the city, within a global context.

Governing motif of the 6th Bucharest Biennale will be displayed in various figures of the concept-couple Belonging & Longing. It will focus on topics related to the imperfect / open nature of (national) identities, the inverse forces of desire for identity and individualism and their structural effects towards our perception of the Other and the Self.

Nicolaus Schafhausen studied art history and worked as artist before he started his career as a curator. He served as artistic director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and as director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. He was a curator at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki (NIFCA) and the founding director of the European Kunsthalle, an initiative to establish a new art institution in Cologne. From 2006 to 2012 he headed the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Nicolaus Schafhausen was the curator of the German Pavilion for the 52nd and the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2009. Schafhausen is also the strategic director of Fogo Island Arts, an initiative of the Canadian Shorefast Foundation (shorefast.org) and since October 2012 Nicolaus Schafhausen is the director of Kunsthalle Wien. In addition to Schafhausen's extensive experience in leading institutions and curating exhibitions, he is author and editor of numerous publications on contemporary art.