The International Jury of the Biennale Arte 2024

The International Jury of the 60^th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is made up of Julia Bryan-Wilson (president), American curator and professor at Columbia University; Alia Swastika, Indonesian curator and writer; Chika Okeke-Agulu, Nigerian curator and art critic; Elena Crippa, Italian curator; and María Inés Rodríguez, French-Colombian curator.

The appointment of the Jury has been deliberated by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia upon recommendation by Adriano Pedrosa, the Curator of the 60^th Exhibition titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, that will be held in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) from April 20^th to November 24^th, 2024.

Julia Bryan-Wilson – President – is Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University. Her curatorial credits include Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen (with Andrea Andersson) and Louise Nevelson: Persistence. She is the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era; Fray: Art and Textile Politics (winner of the ASAP Book Prize, the Frank Jewett Mather Award, and the Robert Motherwell Book Award); and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face. Bryan-Wilson was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow.

Alia Swastika is a curator and researcher/writer that expands her practices in the last 10 years on the issue and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism, where she involved with different projects of decentralization of art, rewriting art history and encouraging local activism. She works as the Director of Biennale Jogja Foundation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She continues her researches on Indonesian female artists during Indonesia’s New Order and how the politics of gender from the regime influenced the practices of artists from that period. She is now part of curatorial team of Sharjah Biennale 16 in 2025.

Chika Okeke-Agulu is Director of the Program in African Studies, Director of Africa World Initiative, and Robert Schirmer Professor of Art & Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University. Okeke-Agulu is Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Oxford (2023), and a Fellow of The British Academy. He is editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and author of El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture (2022). He is on the advisory board of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre, Tate Modern.

Elena Crippa is an Italian curator based in London. Since 2023, she has been Head of Exhibitions at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. She was previously Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, where her exhibitions explored transnational and transcultural intersections and engaged with art from a global perspective. Her shows at Tate included All Too Human (2018), Frank Bowling (2019) Paula Rego (2021) and the 2022 commission Hew Locke: The Procession.

María Inés Rodríguez is a Colombian French curator, currently Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation in Brussels and Artistic Director of Tropical Papers. With a profound commitment to fostering a dialogue between artistic production and historical, political, and social contexts on both local and global levels, she has consistently championed the interconnectedness of art and its broader cultural implications. She was the Director of the CAPC Musée d'art Contemporain, Bordeaux, Curator at Large at MASP, São Paulo; Chief Curator at the MUAC in Mexico City, as well as at the MUSAC in Spain and guest curator at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.

The International Jury will award the following official prizes:

• Golden Lion for best National Participation
• Golden Lion for best participant in the International Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere
• Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the International Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere

The Jury may also award:

• a maximum of one special mention to National Participations
• a maximum of two special mentions to the participants in the International Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere

The Awards Ceremony will take place in Venice on Saturday, April 20^th 2024.

Julia Bryan-Wilson – President – is Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University. Her curatorial credits include Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen (with Andrea Andersson) and Louise Nevelson: Persistence (Collateral Event of the 59^th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia). A widely published art historian and critic, she is the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (University of California Press, 2009); Fray: Art and Textile Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2017, winner of the ASAP Book Prize, the Frank Jewett Mather Award, and the Robert Motherwell Book Award); and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (Yale University Press, 2023). Bryan-Wilson was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, and she has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Terra Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, among others. She has also garnered several awards for her teaching and mentorship.

Alia Swastika is the Director of the Yogyakarta Biennale Foundation. She graduated from the Gadjah Mada University Department of Communication. Since 2008 she has been the curator and Program Director at Ark Galerie, Jakarta/Yogyakarta. Aside from curatorial work, she actively publishes articles in national and international newspapers, magazines, journals, and books. In 2011 Alia became the curator of the Biennale Jogja XI with Suman Gopinath (India), and then in 2012, became one of the Co-Curators of the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea and museums in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2017, she was one of the curating consultants for the exhibition Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. She founded the Study on Art Practices, which publishes the journal Skripta, a medium for contemporary art discourse. Her book “Artist Negotiation Practices” Women and Gender Politics of the New Order” was published with research support from the Ford Foundation in 2019. In  in the last 10 years on the issue and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism, where she involved with different projects of decentralization of art, rewriting art history and encouraging local activism. She continues her researches on Indonesian female artists during Indonesia’s New Order and how the politics of gender from the regime influenced the practices of artists from that period. She is now part of curatorial team of Sharjah Biennale 16 in 2025.

Chika Okeke-Agulu is Director of the Program in African Studies, Director of Africa World Initiative, and Robert Schirmer Professor of Art & Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Oxford (2022-23), and he’s a Fellow of The British Academy. He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; his recent books include El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture (2022); African Artists: From 1882 to Now (2021); Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life (2020); Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (2016). He recently curated Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts (2022), and El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale (2019). Okeke-Agulu serves on the advisory boards of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre, Tate Modern (London), and Museum of West African Art (Benin City). His many awards include The Melville J. Herskovits Prize (African Studies Association, 2016); and Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (College Art Association, 2016).

Elena Crippa is an Italian curator based in London. Since 2023, she has been Head of Exhibitions at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. She was previously Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, where her exhibitions explored transnational and transcultural intersections and engaged with art from a global perspective. Her shows at Tate included All Too Human (2018), Frank Bowling (2019), Kim Lim: Carving and Printing (2020­–21), Paula Rego (2021), and the 2022 commission Hew Locke: The Procession. Before joining Tate, Elena was a lecturer for the Master of Research in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins. She conducted her doctorate research as part of the Tate Research project ‘Art School Educated’ (2009–13). She has published extensively on post-war and contemporary art and exhibitions. A monograph on Sonia Boyce (Tate Publishing) and a book chapter on Francis Newton Souza (HarperCollins Publishers India) are forthcoming.

María Inés Rodríguez, is a French-Colombian curator, currently Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation in Brussels and Artistic Director of Tropical Papers. With a profound commitment to fostering a dialogue between artistic production and historical, political, and social contexts on both local and global levels, she has consistently championed the interconnectedness of art and its broader cultural implications. Previously, she held positions as Director of the CAPC Musée d'art Contemporain, Bordeaux, Curator at Large at MASP, São Paulo, Chief Curator of the MUAC, Mexico City and MUSAC, Spain. Her curatorial experience is highlighted by major retrospectives with Alejandro Jodorowsky, Beatriz González and Babette Mangolte, along with site-specific projects with Danh Vo, Leonor Antunes, Rosa Barba and Teresa Margolles. In addition, she has organised solo exhibitions with artists including, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Sky Hopinka, Leticia Parente, Dominique González-Foerster, Ana Pi, Laure Prouvost, Yona Friedman, among others, reflecting her commitment to presenting artists from across generations and backgrounds.