Theatrical Fields

Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.

Anca Rujoiu is a curator and editor based in Singapore. As curator for exhibitions and later head of publications (2013–2018), she was part of the founding team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. In 2019, she was the co-curator of the third edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara, approached as a one-year institutional programme. Whether working in a contemporary art centre, an independent space, an art school, or in the context of a biennial, she has been passionate about stretching art’s publicness, working across formats. First-Person Institutions, her PhD research at Monash University in Melbourne is focused on institution building, artists’ archives, and transnational imaginaries.

Artist and writer Judith Barry’s work spans several disciplines: architecture, film/video, performance, installation, sculpture, photography and new media. Through this rich variety of media, Barry explores complex relationships between issues of public address, representation, and popular culture.

Barry has exhibited internationally in numerous exhibitions including: the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004), Sao Paolo Biennale (1994), the Venice Biennales of Art and of Architecture, and the Whitney Biennale (1987). Recent exhibitions include: The Content of Form, Generali Foundation, Vienna (2013); Critical Episodes, MACBA, Barcelona (2013); This will have been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s, ICA, Boston (2013); The Deconstructive Impulse, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2012); and dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012). She was awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2000), Best Pavilion at the Cairo Biennale (2001), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011) among others. Public Fantasy, a collection of Barry’s essays, was published by the ICA in London (1991).

Judith Barry was born in Columbus, Ohio, USA, in 1954. She lives and works in New York City, and is currently Director/Professor of the MFA in Visual Arts at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.

Constanze Ruhm is an artist, filmmaker and author whose artistic practice focuses on the relation of cinema, new media and theatrical forms, and investigates questions of female identity and representation.

Ruhm’s works have been shown at international exhibitions, as well as at film festivals, including: Internationale Filmfestspiele / Forum Expanded | Living Archive, Kunstwerke, Berlin, Germany (2013); Internationale Filmfestspiele, Berlin, Germany (2010 and 2011); The 5th International Video Art Biennial, Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012); Tel Aviv Film Festival (2010); The University Art Gallery / Room Gallery, University of California, Irvine (2010); Extracity, Antwerp (2008); Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid (2008); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2006), and 3rd Berlin Bienniale (2004). In 1995 Ruhm represented Austria at the Venice Biennale along with Peter Sandbichler. Ruhm also curates exhibitions, realises publications, and both organises and contributes to international symposia. Constanze Ruhm was born in Vienna, Austria in 1965. She lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. Since 2006, she is Professor for Art and Media at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Eran Schaerf’s multidisciplinary work focuses on the architecture of narration. He has exhibited in group-exhibitions such as Venice Bienniale (2011), Fake or Feint (2008), Territories (2003), Manifesta (1998), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), DOCUMENTA IX (1992). Among his publications are: fm-scenario – where palms stand – mask –delay, London (2012), Blue Key, Cologne (2002), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), Re-enactment, New- York (1996).

Joan Jonas is one of the most significant video and performance artists and important female artists active in the 1960s and 1970s. She pioneered the use of the two genres in visual art and was influential also in other art forms. Incorporating different media, she presents multiple viewpoints and layers of material, texture, and meanings in her work to address current issues. In 1972, she began producing video works that were ground-breaking in emphasising the experience of the medium as a conceptual device and is known for merging various genres in her fragmented video narratives.

Eva Meyer is a writer and filmmaker based in Berlin. She is the author of various works of cinematic thinking including What Does the Veil Know? (ed. in collaboration with Vivian Liska, 2009), Frei und indirekt (2010), Zählen und Erzählen. Für eine Semiotik des Weiblichen (1983, reprint 2013). She has taught at various universities and art schools in Europe and the United States, and currently is a faculty member at the Zurich University of the Arts. Since 1997 she has collaborated with the filmmaker Eran Schaerf, focusing on documentary fiction.

Isaac Julien, CBE RA is a distinguished filmmaker and installation artist, and Professor, UC Santa Cruz. His multiscreen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disciplines to create a poetic and unique visual language. Julien’s notable documentary-drama, Looking for Langston (1989), garnered him a cult following. His works have shown in solo shows internationally, and he has participated in various biennales. Most recently, he received the Charles Wollaston Award (2017) for most distinguished work at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and in 2018 he was made a Royal Academician. Julien was awarded the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s birthday honours, 2017.

Photographer and filmmaker Stan Douglas has, since the late 1980’s, examined complex intersections of narrative, fact and fiction, while scrutinising the constructs of the media he employs and their influence on our understanding of reality. His interest in the social implementation of Western ideas of progress, particularly utopian philosophies, is located in their often divisive political and economic effects. Douglas’s work is often characterised by extensive research and an interrogation of the structural possibilities of film and video, in concert with intricately developed narratives.

Douglas was recently awarded the Scotiabank Photography Award (2013) and the Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography, New York (2012). His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide, including: the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota (2012); MOCA, Los Angeles (2012); the Power Plant, Toronto (2011); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); the International Center of Photography, New York (2008), Staatsgalerie and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2007); and documentas 11, 10, 9 (2002, 1997, 1992).

Stan Douglas was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1960, where he lives and work.