The International Jury of the 59th International Art Exhibition

The Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia, upon recommendation by the Artistic Director Cecilia Alemani, has appointed the International Jury of the 59^th International Art Exhibition (23 April > 27 November 2022) composed of the following members:

Adrienne Edwards (President of the Jury) is Engell Speyer Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Co-Curator of the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Previously, she served as Curator of Performa in New York City and as Curator-at-Large for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In addition to interdisciplinary performance commissions and curatorial projects, Edwards has taught Art History and Visual Studies at New York University and The New School, and writes extensively for a broad range of publications.

Lorenzo Giusti is Director of GAMeC Bergamo. An art historian and curator, from 2012 to 2017 he served as Director of the MAN Museum in Nuoro. He has staged exhibitions and edited books dedicated to leading figures from 20th-century art as well as contemporary international artists, collaborating with numerous institutions in Italy and abroad. He is President of AMACI – the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums.

Julieta González is the Artistic Director at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil. She is a curator and researcher who works at the intersection of anthropology, cybernetics, architecture, ecology, the built environment and the visual arts. She has held curatorial positions at institutions such as Tate Modern, Museo Tamayo, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), The Bronx Museum, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, among others. She has organised and co-organised over sixty exhibitions and has published numerous essays in exhibition catalogues and periodical publications.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and Artistic Director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and is the Artistic Director of sonsbeek 20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He is professor in the Spatial Strategies MA programme at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin. From 2023 he will take on the role of Director at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

Susanne Pfeffer is the Director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST. She served as Director of Fridericianum (2013–2017); Chief Curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2007–2012); Curator and Advisor to the MoMA PS1; and Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Bremen (2004–2006). Pfeffer curated the Swiss Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2015. At Biennale Arte 2017, her presentation of Anne Imhof at the German Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

The International Jury will award the following official prizes:

• Golden Lion for best National Participation
• Golden Lion for best participant in the International Exhibition The Milk of Dreams
• Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the International Exhibition The Milk of Dreams

The Jury will also have the opportunity of awarding:

• a maximum of one special mention to National Participations
• a maximum of two special mentions to the artists in the International Exhibition The Milk of Dreams

The Awards Ceremony will take place during the official opening of the 59^th Exhibition, Saturday April 23^rd, 2022 at Ca’ Giustinian, the headquarters of La Biennale di Venezia.
The Exhibition will be open to the public from 11 am on that same day.

Adrienne Edwards is Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art and co-curator of the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Previously, she served as Curator of Performa in New York City and as Curator-at-Large for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In addition to more than forty interdisciplinary performance commissions, Edwards’s curatorial projects have included Blackness in Abstraction at Pace Gallery, New York (2016); the travelling exhibition and catalogue Jason Moran at Walker Art Center, ICA Boston, and Wexner Center for the Arts (2018-2019); ASSEMBLY for Frieze New York’s Live Program and the Artist Award (2018); Moved by the Motion’s Sudden Rise (2020) at the Whitney; Dave McKenzie's solo exhibition The Story I Tell Myself and performance commission Disturbing the View (2021), both at the Whitney; and My Barbarian's twentieth-anniversary exhibition, performances, and catalogue (2021-2022) at the Whitney and travelling to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She was part of the Whitney's core team for David Hammons’s public art monument Day’s End. Edwards has taught art history and visual studies at New York University and the New School. She is a frequent contributor to a range of artist monographs, anthologies, exhibition catalogues, and academic journals.

Lorenzo Giusti is an Italian art historian and curator. Currently, he is the Director of GAMeC Bergamo. From 2012 to 2017 he served as Director of the MAN Museum in Nuoro. He has staged exhibitions dedicated to leading figures from twentieth-century art as well as contemporary art projects collaborating with numerous artists of the international scene. His special interests lie in the relationship between historical avant-gardes and contemporary languages as well as between ecological thinking and the visual arts. In 2016 he joined the curatorial team of the Third Shenzhen Animation Biennale. He also has curated group exhibitions in public and private institutions, including Triennale Milano, FRAC Corse and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. In 2017 he curated the symposium Museums at the Post-Digital Turn at OGR Turin. From 2019 to 2021 he has been curator of the Back to the Future section of Artissima Turin. In 2020 he created the digital platform Radio GAMeC. He has been President of AMACI – the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums since 2020.

Julieta González is a curator and researcher who works at the intersection of anthropology, cybernetics, architecture, ecology, the built environment and the visual arts. She has held curatorial positions at Tate Modern, Museo Tamayo, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), The Bronx Museum, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, among others, and is currently Artistic Director at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil. She has organized and co-organized over 60 exhibitions including surveys of artists Juan Downey, Jaime Davidovich, Franz Erhard Walther, Stephen Willats, Rita McBride, Jac Leirner, Gego, Lina Bo Bardi, and Francisco Brennand as well as several research-based group exhibitions, amongst which Memories of Underdevelopment, that researched early instances of decolonial aesthetics in Latin America. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London (2013), and was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1997-1998), she studied architecture in Caracas and in Paris between 1986 and 1993.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and is the artistic director of Sonsbeek 20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He is professor in the Spatial Strategies MA program at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin. Curator of Dark'Art Biennial 2018 in Dakar, Senegal. He is the Artistic Director of Rencontres de Bamako (2021-22), Mali. From 2023 he will take on the role of Director at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

Susanne Pfeffer, a curator and art historian, has been the Director of the MUSEUMM MKFÜR MODERNE KUNST in Frankfurt am Main since January 2018. From 2013 to 2017, she was the Director of the Fridericianum in Kassel. Before that, she served for six years as Chief Curator of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2007–2012), and as Curator and Advisor to the MoMA PS1 in New York, where she was honored by the AICA USA in 2009 for her exhibition Kenneth Anger. From 2004 to 2006 she was the Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Bremen. Susanne Pfeffer been active internationally as a Guest Curator at the São Paulo Biennale, the Lyon Biennale, the Tel Aviv Art Museum, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Museion in Bolzano. At the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2017), her presentation of Anne Imhof at the German Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. She curated the Swiss Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2015 in Venice. She is the editor of numerous artist monographs and exhibition catalogues.