Maria Lind

Drawing of Maria Lind by Bernd Krauss

Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. Since 2023, Lind is the director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Giron/Kiruna.[1] From 2020 to 2023, she served as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden in Moscow. Prior to that, she was the director of Stockholm’s Tensta Konsthall, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, the director of IASPIS in Stockholm and the director of Kunstverein München, Munich.

For over three decades, Lind has developed a distinct curatorial methodology that is art centred, process oriented and context sensitive.[2] She expresses a staunch belief in art as a form of understanding the complexity of life, on par with science, politics and religion. Known for reimagining art institutions in ways that resonate with current artistic practices and social processes, her curatorial work has been associated, in a Northern and Western European context, with "new institutionalism".[3] She has often brought attention to lesser-known artists and practices, including social practice, collective work and research-based art, anticipating their later acknowledgement in the art field.[4]

Lind has sought to widen the frame of art, dedicating a considerable amount of her work and writings to infrastructure, institutional methodologies, collaborative networks, conditions of production, art funding, and so on.[5][6] More recently, she has insisted on the importance of placing art and artists centre stage: “I have a distinct feeling that we need to return to art itself, to focus on artworks and art projects in the wake of institutions becoming more and more obsessed with themselves, curating programmes being preoccupied with curating and curatorial students becoming stuck with in curatorial pirouettes or symbiotic collaborations. Not that art has disappeared completely, but it has been pushed into the background.”[7]

From 2011 to 2018, Lind was Director of Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; in 2019 she was co-curator of the third edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara; in 2016 she was appointed artistic director for the eleventh Gwangju Bienniale, Gwangju.[8] During the 2010s, she also held the position of Professor of Artistic Research at the Oslo Art Academy. Between 2008 and 2010 she was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; from 2003 to 2005 she was the Director of IASPIS (International Artist Studio Program in Sweden), Stockholm. From 2002 to 2004 she was the Director of Kunstverein München, Munich; from 1997 to 2001 she was a curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm; in 1998, she was co-curator of Manifesta 2, Luxembourg. In 2009, Lind received the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. She has been an art critic at the national dailies Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, in addition to writing extensively for catalogues and other publications.

  1. ^ "Maria Lind appointed Director". e-flux Announcements.
  2. ^ Voorhies, James Timothy (2017). Beyond objecthood : the exhibition as a critical form since 1968. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 978-0-262-03552-1. OCLC 949828471.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ "Maria Lind, "We Want to Become an Institution", interview by Lucie Kolb and Gabriel Flückiger". On Curating.
  4. ^ Selected Maria Lind writing. Maria Lind, Brian Kuan Wood, Beatrice von Bismarck. Berlin. 2010. ISBN 978-1-934105-18-4. OCLC 700399727.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. ^ European cultural policies 2015 : a report with scenarios on the future of public funding for contemporary art in Europe. Maria Lind, Raimund Minichbauer, Frieze Art Fair. Stockholm: Iaspis. 2005. ISBN 3-9501762-4-1. OCLC 84685166.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ^ Taking the matter into common hands : on contemporary art and collaborative practices. Johanna Billing, Maria Lind, Lars Nilsson. London, UK: Black Dog Publishing. 2007. ISBN 978-1-906155-18-6. OCLC 153560473.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  7. ^ Lind, Maria (2019). Seven years : the rematerialisation of art from 2011 to 2017. Berlin. ISBN 978-3-95679-463-6. OCLC 1129256532.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Delaney, Brigid (4 October 2016). "Gwangju Biennale: personal and political mingle among the living and the dead". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2022.