 | Professor Ute Bauer, Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art
Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is the Founding Director of the NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Previously, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT Cambridge, where she also served as Founding Director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2005–13). For more than three decades, Bauer has worked as curator of exhibitions and presentations, connecting contemporary art, film, video, and sound through transdisciplinary formats including as co-curator of Documenta11 and the 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She also co-curated the US Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale featuring eminent artist Joan Jonas. Bauer was an expedition leader of TBA21-Academy The Current (2015–18) exploring the Pacific Archipelago and littorals that are most impacted by climate change and human interventions in their environments. |
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 | Mr Zulkifle Mahmod, Sound-Media Artist
Zulkifle Mahmod (b. 1975) is one of Singapore’s leading sound artists. ZUL has been at the forefront of a generation of sound-media artists in Singapore’s contemporary art development – one of the genres of international contemporary art-making that has been garnering interest for its inter-disciplinary approach and experimental edge. ZUL represented Singapore with a Sound Art Performance at the Ogaki Biennale in 2006, and was Singapore’s first sound artist with a full-on sound sculpture at the Singapore Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007.
ZUL has cut a reputation for integrating 3-D forms with ‘sound constructions’ and ‘sound-scapes’, often crossing genres and collaborating with other artists. ZUL is also the designer for the first Singtel F1 Grand Prix Night Race trophy in Singapore. In early 2017, ZUL has been awarded the special inaugural honorary award, Soichiro Fukutake Prize by Benesse Holding Inc for his Singapore Biennale 2016 commissioned artwork. Henceforth, his artwork titled; SONICreflection is now acquired by Fukutake Foundation, part of Benesse Art Site Naoshima in Feb 2019.
ZUL has exhibited in Singapore, Thailand, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Italy, Moscow, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Norway and Finland. He was part of a creative talents traveling showcase in Beijing, London, New York and Singapore for Singapore Inside Out. His notable initiatives include an industrial-sound inspired soundtrack in conjunction with an Antoni Tapies exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum and winning Singapore Straits Time Life! Theatre Award 2010 for Best Sound Design (RPM by Kafai/Theatreworks).
www.zulmahmod.com |
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 | Ms Bala Starr, Director of Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts
Bala Starr joined LASALLE College of the Arts as Director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore in 2013. At LASALLE, she leads contemporary art programmes that promote interrelations between Asian and international art practices, inquiry and experimentation. From 2000 to 2013, she was responsible for exhibitions, acquisitions and publishing at the University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art where she also managed major partnerships.
Starr has curated numerous group exhibitions including Two houses: Politics and histories in the collections of John Chia and Yeap Lam Yang, The world precedes the eye, Artists imagine a nation and Post-planning. She has organised major solo projects with artists such as Jason Lim, Jesse Jones, Boedi Widjaja, Marco Fusinato, Navin Thomas, Ana Prvački, Gigi Scara and Jitish Kallat, and curated surveys of the work of Phillip Brophy, Geoff Lowe and A Constructed World, Vivienne Shark LeWitt and many others. She has written catalogues and essays, lectured on contemporary art, museology and curating, and participated in international juries and review panels. Early experiences of working with artists through studio and exhibition programmes were formative influences. Throughout her career in art spaces and museums, Starr has advocated for intergenerational exchange by employing independent curators and mentoring emerging artists, curators and writers. |
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 | Dr June Yap, Director of Curatorial, Programmes and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum
Dr June Yap is Director of Curatorial, Programmes and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum, where she oversees content creation and museum programming.
Her prior roles include Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator (South and Southeast Asia), Deputy Director and Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, and curator at the Singapore Art Museum.
Amongst exhibitions she has curated are No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale with artist Ho Tzu Nyen, The Future of Exhibition: It Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Singapore), Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Germany), media art exhibitions Interrupt and Twilight Tomorrow at the Singapore Art Museum. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016). |
