Rhizome is pleased to announce that Los Angeles-based writer and artist Aria Dean will be joining the organization as assistant curator beginning October 1st. Dean will work with artistic director Michael Connor and preservation director Dragan Espenschied on Rhizome's efforts to preserve, present, and re-perform works of net art from the 1980s to the present day, as well as organizing events and publishing articles online. This appointment was funded by a generous grant from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation.
Dean graduated from Oberlin College in 2015. Her writing has been featured in Artforum, The New Inquiry, Real Life Magazine, Topical Cream Magazine, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. She also co-directs gallery and project space As It Stands LA.
The appointment arrives at a moment of expansion for Rhizome's curatorial staff, which will also soon include a software curator and a net art Ph.D. student, a partnership position with Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University.
Photo: Emmanuel Olunkwa