Defne Ayas is the Director of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam as of January 2012. Before that, Ayas worked as a director of programs of the Prince Claus Fund Partnership of Arthub Asia and as an art history instructor at New York University in Shanghai. Ayas has also been a curator/programmer of PERFORMA since 2004, the biennial of visual art performance based in New York City, where she has managed the programming and curatorial partnerships with a consortium of 80+ cultural institutions across New York City and (co-) organized acclaimed projects with an international roster of artists and curators. She remains a curator-at- large at Performa.
Ayas' recent projects include Double Infinity"-an ambitious cultural exchange project with Van Abbe Museum in Shanghai (with Charles Esche & Davide Quadrio), Blind Dates (with Neery Melkonian) at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, as well as live works and projects for Performa09 by numerous artists including Ahmet Ogut, Yeondoo Jung, Rabih Mroue, Dexter Sinister, Paul Elliman, Guido van der Werve, Khatt Foundation, and Alicia Framis across Manhattan venues such as Asia Society, Art Production Fund Lab, PS122, Bidoun Magazine and the Marshall Chess Club. Ayas supervised Performa09's Writing Live program for emerging art critics and directed the biennial's Architecture & City focus, introducing first-time collaborations with Storefront for Art and Architecture, Common Room, Van Alen, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and Public School (for Architecture). She also directed Performa's Futurism related research seminars on architecture, graphic design, and noise music in China (March-June 2009).
With Arthub's Davide Quadrio, Ayas also co-organized "The Making of the Silk Roads," an acclaimed performative symposium featuring 35 artists, curators and scholars across Asia (BUG, Bangkok, August, 2009), co-produced "RMB City Opera," a stage performance by Cao Fei in Turin, Italy (Artissima November, 2009), and Final Cut, a city-wide new media festival featuring live works by Christian Marclay and Feng Mengbo among others, in collaboration with the Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation in 2008.
At Performa07, Ayas presented Beijing-based “Long March Project” with projects by Qiu Zhijie and Xu Zhen throughout New York institutions including The China Institute, Museum of Chinese in Americas and The Studio Museum in Harlem (with Lu Jie). She installed "Bring Me the Head of.." by artist Serkan Ozkaya in New York and Shanghai restaurants, among many other projects, and organized “Open City,” the first show of Yoko Ono’s in Istanbul in 2008 (with Selim Birsel). In 2006, Ayas was a co-curator of “Mercury In Retrograde” at De Appel in Amsterdam and invited artist Michael Blum to re-stage the Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co., an established Jewish bank turned into a controversial looting institution during WWII in the Netherlands.
In 2005, Ayas worked extensively as the consortium liaison for Performa's first edition, supervising the participating venues' programming for the biennial, and acted as the artist liaison for artists such as Carey Young, Sislej Xhafa, Cliff Owens, and Melik Ohanian while studying at de Appel in Amsterdam and preparing "This May Be What Parallel Play Looks Like” for Sculpture Center, NYC, a video program featuring works Ahmet Ogut, Emily Jacir, Erkan Ozgen, Sener Ozmen, Jakup Ferri, and Yael Bartana.
In 2004, Ayas was the participating curator of public.exe: Public Execution, an exhibition exploring the definition, distribution, and reception of public art in the age of new media at Exit Art in New York and "Democracy is Fun?,” at White Box, NYC, in 2004 (both with Michele Thursz and Anne Ellegood). Ayas's actions have been reviewed by Art in America, New York Times, Frieze, LA Times, Asia Art Pacific, and Timeout New York.
Ayas has served (or continues to serve) as an advisor and consultant for a number of projects and institutions including Artissima, 8th Gwangju Biennial, Center for Contemporary Art in Kabul, Artist Pension Trust and has lectured throughout Asia, including at Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong), Rogue Art (Kuala Lumpur), PIST (Istanbul), Zendai Museum, Moca Shanghai, Shanghai Literary Festival, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and Architectural Association London (Shanghai) as well as at the Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Chinese in Americas (New York).
Ayas completed De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam and received her Masters from ITP at NYU in 2003.
Ayas' recent projects include Double Infinity"-an ambitious cultural exchange project with Van Abbe Museum in Shanghai (with Charles Esche & Davide Quadrio), Blind Dates (with Neery Melkonian) at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, as well as live works and projects for Performa09 by numerous artists including Ahmet Ogut, Yeondoo Jung, Rabih Mroue, Dexter Sinister, Paul Elliman, Guido van der Werve, Khatt Foundation, and Alicia Framis across Manhattan venues such as Asia Society, Art Production Fund Lab, PS122, Bidoun Magazine and the Marshall Chess Club. Ayas supervised Performa09's Writing Live program for emerging art critics and directed the biennial's Architecture & City focus, introducing first-time collaborations with Storefront for Art and Architecture, Common Room, Van Alen, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and Public School (for Architecture). She also directed Performa's Futurism related research seminars on architecture, graphic design, and noise music in China (March-June 2009).
With Arthub's Davide Quadrio, Ayas also co-organized "The Making of the Silk Roads," an acclaimed performative symposium featuring 35 artists, curators and scholars across Asia (BUG, Bangkok, August, 2009), co-produced "RMB City Opera," a stage performance by Cao Fei in Turin, Italy (Artissima November, 2009), and Final Cut, a city-wide new media festival featuring live works by Christian Marclay and Feng Mengbo among others, in collaboration with the Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation in 2008.
At Performa07, Ayas presented Beijing-based “Long March Project” with projects by Qiu Zhijie and Xu Zhen throughout New York institutions including The China Institute, Museum of Chinese in Americas and The Studio Museum in Harlem (with Lu Jie). She installed "Bring Me the Head of.." by artist Serkan Ozkaya in New York and Shanghai restaurants, among many other projects, and organized “Open City,” the first show of Yoko Ono’s in Istanbul in 2008 (with Selim Birsel). In 2006, Ayas was a co-curator of “Mercury In Retrograde” at De Appel in Amsterdam and invited artist Michael Blum to re-stage the Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co., an established Jewish bank turned into a controversial looting institution during WWII in the Netherlands.
In 2005, Ayas worked extensively as the consortium liaison for Performa's first edition, supervising the participating venues' programming for the biennial, and acted as the artist liaison for artists such as Carey Young, Sislej Xhafa, Cliff Owens, and Melik Ohanian while studying at de Appel in Amsterdam and preparing "This May Be What Parallel Play Looks Like” for Sculpture Center, NYC, a video program featuring works Ahmet Ogut, Emily Jacir, Erkan Ozgen, Sener Ozmen, Jakup Ferri, and Yael Bartana.
In 2004, Ayas was the participating curator of public.exe: Public Execution, an exhibition exploring the definition, distribution, and reception of public art in the age of new media at Exit Art in New York and "Democracy is Fun?,” at White Box, NYC, in 2004 (both with Michele Thursz and Anne Ellegood). Ayas's actions have been reviewed by Art in America, New York Times, Frieze, LA Times, Asia Art Pacific, and Timeout New York.
Ayas has served (or continues to serve) as an advisor and consultant for a number of projects and institutions including Artissima, 8th Gwangju Biennial, Center for Contemporary Art in Kabul, Artist Pension Trust and has lectured throughout Asia, including at Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong), Rogue Art (Kuala Lumpur), PIST (Istanbul), Zendai Museum, Moca Shanghai, Shanghai Literary Festival, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and Architectural Association London (Shanghai) as well as at the Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Chinese in Americas (New York).
Ayas completed De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam and received her Masters from ITP at NYU in 2003.
