Defne Ayas

Defne Ayas
Born	1976
Nationality	Turkish
Occupation	Curator

Defne Ayas (born 1976) is an internationally distinguished arts administrator, curator, educator, and publisher in the field of contemporary visual art and its institutions. She is currently the director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam.

At Witte de With, Ayas oversees an exhibition and publication program devoted to established and emerging artists, writers, and curators from across the globe.

Since her arrival in 2012, she has commissioned long-term projects, group exhibitions and solo projects, including three-part Art in the Age of…series (with focus on energy and raw materials, asymmetric warfare and planetary computation) (2015), Bit Rot by Douglas Coupland (2015), Character is Fate by Willem de Rooij (2015), Moderation(s) by artist Heman Chong (with Spring, Hong Kong, 2012-2014); Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists (with UCCA, Beijing, 2014); The Humans – a theatrical play by writer and artist Alexandre Singh – and its monthly summits Causeries (2012-2013); the open archive and collection Tulkus 1880 to 2018 by artist Paola Pivi (with Castello di Rivoli and Arthub Asia, 2013-2018), Blueprints by Qiu Zhijie (2012) as well as the award-winning exhibition The Temptation of AA Bronson (2013).

Ayas has worked on a number of biennial projects such as: curator of the Pavilion of Turkey in the 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale; co-curator the 6th Moscow Biennale ACTING IN A CENTER IN A CITY IN THE HEART OF THE ISLAND OF EURASIA (with Nicolaus Schafhausen and Bart de Baere); curator of the 11th Baltic Triennale (with Benjamin Cook, LUX, in collaboration with artists Ieva Misevičiūtė and Michael Portnoy ); co-curator of the Istanbul and Bandung city pavilions as part of the Intercity Project of the 9th Shanghai Biennale. Ayas also served as a curatorial advisor to the 8th Shanghai Biennale (China), and as a publication advisor to the 8th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) in 2010.

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