Gregory Burke, Director/Curator, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand
A native of New Zealand, Gregory Burke is currently the Director/Curator of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand's only collection based contemporary art museum. In 1999 Burke organized Curating Now, an international conference held at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; he has also been instrumental in arranging opportunities and residencies for New Zealanders in Berlin, New York and Sydney. In 2001 Burke curated New Zealand's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale and currently he is putting together an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art with Fumio Nanjo. He has also worked as an artist, curator, and in development and policy advisement. gb@govettbrewster.org.nz

Bart De Baere, Director of MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium
Since 2002, Bart De Baere has been the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp. Before that, he was involved in policy making for two years, developing a policy for cultural heritage that envisages the whole of it as an immaterial activity. Prior to that, he was chair of the Flemish Government Council of Museums, and now he is chair of its Council for Culture. He was, among other things, an advisor to the City of Johannesburg for the foundation of the Biennial of Johannesburg and a member of the International Board of the network of Soros Centers of Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe. He was a curator of Documenta IX in Kassel. Exhibitions include: This is the show and the show is many things (1994, Ghent Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgium); Jimmie Durham - David Hammons - Pedro Cabrita Reis (1993, Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland); Honoré O, Hugo Debaere, Billy Mandindi, Rik Moens, Albert Munyai (1995, Africa Museum, Biënnial of Johannesburg, South-Africa); and in the MuHKA Horizons of Reality (2003, with Viktor Misiano), Michelangelo Pistoletto & Cittadellarte (2003, with CALC); and All Under Heaven (2004, with Fei da Wei). bart.debaere@muhka.be

Chaos Y. Chen, Chief Curator, Millennium Art Museum, Beijing, China
Chaos Y. Chen's curatorial work is focused on theme-based exhibitions, the most recent being Driving the Skyline (architecture, 2004), Wim Wenders (photography & film, 2004) as well as several major survey exhibitions, including Inside Out (1998) and Guangzhou Triennial (2002). Prior to these projects, she worked at the Beijing Art Museum, The Asia Society, Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University and later with the Kunst-Werke Berlin and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. She is a contributor to the publications Reading (Beijing), World of Art (Shanghai), Art Contemporary (Shanghai), MAKE (London), and others. Born in Shanghai, she holds a degree in Art History from the Nanjing Academy of Art and has been awarded both the Henry Luce Scholarship (1998) and the RAVE Scholarship (2001). chaos@readchina.com

Rifky Effendy, curator, Jakarta, Indonesia
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1968, Rifky Effendy has been curating and co–curating exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad since 1997. In 2001 he organized the First Bandung Biennale and is now the curator at Cemara 6 Galeri in Jakarta. From 1995-1999 Effendy was the Founder and Artistic Director of the Ceramic Studio, Batamerah, Jakarta and from 1997-1999 taught ceramics at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. He has held residencies in Australia and Japan, and in spring 2004 was in New York as a Fellow of the Asian Cultural Council and as a resident of ISCP. His conference paper will look at the symbiotic development of Indonesian contemporary art and the development of the infrastructures and institutions dedicated to the arts, and the ways in which the Indonesian work has appropriated and adapted to foreign influence. rifky68@yahoo.com

Michele Faguet, Founder & Director, Espacio La Rebeca, Bogota, Colombia
A graduate of Columbia University’s M.A. Art History program, Michele Faguet is the Founding Director of Espacio La Rebeca, an independent non-profit space, in Bogota, Colombia. The mission of Espacio La Rebeca is to create a space for dialogue among artists from the diverse artistic scenes of Bogota, and Faguet works to bring to Bogota international artists who share in the concerns of Colombian artists, establishing a network of both commonality and diversity. From 2000-2001 Faguet worked as Director of La Panaderia, an artist-run independent space in a former bakery in Mexico City. Faguet has worked at the Swiss Institute in New York City, and TRANS.arts.culture.media, and has taught in the Department of Visual Arts, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota. She has written on the work of Carlos Amorales and the artistic landscape of Mexico City. larebeca@michica.org

Aki Hoashi, Director, Arcus Project, Ibaraki, Japan
Aki Hoashi is a freelance coordinator and translator based in Tokyo, Japan. She obtained her MA in Museums and Gallery Management from City University in UK in 1994 and has been involved in various contemporary art projects since 1997. She has assisted in exhibition programs of the Japan Foundation Asia Center, including Under Construction (2002), and Alternatives: Contemporary Art Spaces in Asia (2001). She has also worked as coordinator for public art projects, including Dentsu Inc. Artwork Project, which is a corporate collection of contemporary art housed in a building designed by Jean Nouvel. Currently, as the director of ARCUS Project in Ibaraki, Japan, she manages a community-based artist-in-residence program for young artists mainly funded by the local prefectural and municipal governments. hoashiaqui@hotmail.com

Viera Jancekova, Director/Curator, Jan Koniarek Gallery, Trnava, Slovak Republic
Born in 1974 in the Slovak Republic, Viera Jancekova has been running this non-profit exhibition space since 2002. Since 1996 has curated more than 30 exhibitions in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and Italy. As a co-founder of the network Art Centres of Europe, Jancekova is currently working on the international project Re:Location Shake that after two years of mutual collaborations takes place simultaneously in eight venues across Europe. The challenge involved bringing art centres from different countries and artistic circumstances to work together on a joint project, not by imposing any single standpoint, but rather confronting each other's specific situations. She is also the president of ERRATA (Group of Young Art Historians and Art Consumers). viera@gjk.sk

Sergio Mah, curator and sociologist, based in Lisbon, Portugal
Sergio Mah was born in Mozambique, in 1970, and now lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a professor of the History of Photography at the Social and Human Sciences Faculty of Universidada Nova de Lisboa and at AR.CO – Centro de Arte eComunicacao Visual. Additionally, Mah works as a Sociologist-Researcher at the Centre of Studies and Applied Research Instituto Superior de Sevico Social, where he carries out sociological research. Mah was the curator of LisboaPhoto 2003, a biennial of photographic and video work, and he also recently wrote the introduction to the book of artist Daniel Blaufuks, Collected Short Stories (pictured at left), among other writings on photographic history and theory. sergiomah@yahoo.com sergiomah@netcabo.pt

Bartomeu Mari, Chief Curator, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Bartomeu Mari was born in Eivissa, Spain, in 1966, and studied philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He was just appointed Chief Curator at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and was most recently project coordinator at the International Center for Contemporary Culture in Donostia-San Sebastián, after six years as the director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Recent projects include The Great Theater of the World at the 2002 Taipei Biennial, which included the work of such artists as Oladele Bamgboye, Thomas Demand, and Joan Jonas. Mari has written on the work of David Lamelas, Thomas Schütte, Lawrence Weiner, Marcel Broothaers, Rachel Whiteread, and Juliao Sarmento, among many others. bartomeu@cannotquit.com

Thanasis Moutsopoulos, architect, writer and curator, Athens, Greece
Thanasis Moutsopoulos studied architecture at the National Technical University (1989). Master of Design Studies, Harvard University and is now Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras, Greece. Curator for the exhibitions Freak Show: Public Buildings in the 90s (Athens, 1997/Thessaloniki, 1997), Looks Human: Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Art (Athens,1998) and Extreme Pop Media (Athens, 2002). In practice in Athens since 1990, participated in many competitions with distinctions. Collaborated with many reviews, published Looks Human: Anthropomorphism, Schematisation and Abstraction in pop culture, No Feelings: visual punk and Globalization Hybrids. He was appointed commissioner for the Greek Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2002). He is currently the artistic director for the Photosyngyria exhibition, an international photography event in Thessaloniki, Greece (February 2005). tmoutsopoulos@hotmail.com

Dr. Alka Pande, Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator, Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi and Consultant and Curator, India Trade Promotion Council – National Institute of Design, New Delhi
Dr. Pande has been responsible for curating some of Delhi's most unusual and perceptive exhibitions in recent times. These include Solitude, Navarasa, Borderless Terrain, Androgyne, Reclaiming the Lotus and Margi Desi. She was the New Delhi coordinator for Documenta XI. Dr. Pande has also recently co-curated Tree to the Seed for the Hernie Onstaadt Museum, Oslo and Science in the Arts as part of the Great Arc exhibition at Truman's Gallery, London organised by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Dr. Pande is Visiting Faculty for Aesthetics at the College of Art, New Delhi. She has taught art history at the Department of Fine Arts, Punjab University, Chandigarh, where she now holds the post of Reader. She is the author of Mustard Fields to Disco Lights: Folk Performers and Music of Punjab, Indian Erotica, Chinese Erotica, Masterpieces of Indian Art and Ardhanarisvara, the Androgyne: Probing the Gender Within. Her forthcoming publications include Every Woman's Personal Kamasutra and An Anthology of Erotic Indian Literature. alkapande@hotmail.com

Dina Ramadan, writer, Cairo, Egypt
Dina Ramadan is based between Cairo and New York. She is pursuing a PhD in Arabic Literature, with an interest in contemporary literature and visual arts, in the Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Culture at Columbia University where she is a Faculty Fellow. She has written on the contemporary Arab culture scene, and more specifically Egypt, for a number of local and international publications including Frieze, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art and Universes in Universe. dar2103@columbia.edu