Maria Lind, director of Stockholm’s Testa Konsthall, has been appointed artistic director of the 2016 Gwangju Biennale.

“Gwangju Biennale has a great strength in carrying out a high quality exhibition and bringing about insight into Gwangju’s distinct characteristics,” Lind said during a press conference held earlier this week. “I will highlight these aspects. I will make sure next year’s Gwangju Biennale will be a place where artists, the public, people working in the art industry, and local residents gather together to discuss, relate, and communicate in the name of art,” she added.

Lind has been at the helm of Tensta Konsthall since 2011, implementing a program that explores social roles of art.

Between 2008 and 2010, Lind was director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Prior to that, she was director of the Stockholm arts organization IASPIS from 2005 to 2007, and director of the Munich Kunstverein from 2002 – 2004.

Lind was also curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 1997–2001 and co-curated Manifesta 2 in 1998.

Minouk Lim’s Navigation ID (2014), part of the 2014 Gwangju Biennale
Photo: John McCord

The previous edition of the biennale, curated by Dia Art Foundation director Jessica Morgan, was marked by the resignation of Lee Yong-woo president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, over the censorship of a 32-foot-wide painting by Hong Song-dam, entitled Sewol Owol, which portrays the Korean president Park Geun-hye as a scarecrow facing off the angered parents of children who died in the sinking of the MV Sewol ferry in 2014, a national tragedy that had enormous political repercussions.

Lee Yong-woo, former president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation
Photo: Gwangju Biennale

The 2016 Gwangju Biennale will take place from September 2 – November 6.