The document has officially revealed the replacement selection committee tasked with finding the next artistic director of the prestigious German quinennial, a search still underway after the original committee resigned en masse last year.
The new six-man selection panel includes Yilmaz Digeor, Sergio Edelstein, N’Kone Fall, Krithia Kaweewong, Mami Katoka and Yasmil Raymond, all but one of whom have been selected in at least one major biennial before.
This group includes three specifically from Germany (Degevier, Edelstein, and Raymond), but none of the previous group.
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Edelsztein, an Israeli who is seen as a response to the ongoing decline of Documenta 15 in 2022, has faced widespread accusations of anti-Semitism. The previous panel included an Israeli artist, but he resigned in response to the situation facing his country after the October 7 Hamas attack.
In Germany, Digivier and Raymond are already well-known for directing the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the latter for directing the Porticus Museum and, earlier this year, the prestigious Stadtelschule art school in Frankfurt. Dividing his time between Berlin and Tel Aviv, Edelstein was the longtime director and chief curator of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, which he founded.
Fall previously served as faculty director Black Review, an important journal devoted to African art. Kaweewang is the Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Katoka is the director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
Six curators now fill the six who left abruptly last November. Israeli artist Bracha L. Around the same time as Ettinger left, Indian poet Ranjit Hoskot became the subject of controversy after the German press republished a BDS letter he had signed; He also resigned as a result.
Then, four other curators—Simon Najami, Kong Yan, Kathryn Romberg, and María Inez Rodríguez—declined what they called „the open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches worthy of documentarians and curators.” – And left.
The mass resignations only added to fears that the document may never recover from the scandals that surrounded Document 15 of 2022. But document leadership has assured that the next edition, scheduled for 2027, will still take place, albeit at an unspecified date in Wednesday’s announcement.
Yet amid those assurances, statements from the document’s leaders have left some worried about what form the next program will take. Although the document will not implement a code of conduct for its next artistic director, it will expand its supervisory board to include greater representation from the city of Kassel, where the documentary takes place every five years, and the state of Hesse, where Kassel is located. .
There will also be a scientific advisory panel of experts and the next artistic director will have to give a talk on „their understanding of human dignity and how this should be ensured in the exhibition they curate”.
Regarding the new selection committee, Documenta Managing Director Andreas Hoffmann said, “I am confident that the expertise and multi-perspective of the new selection committee will lead to a forward-looking proposal for the makeup art movement. It lays the groundwork for the international art world to once again be an introduced and welcome guest in Kassel.