Yilmaz Dziewior

 

Yilmaz Dziewior was born in Bonn in 1964 and studied art history there and in London. He received his doctorate summa cum laude from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2005 with a thesis on the Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Since 2009, Yilmaz Dziewior has been director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz. Before that, he was director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg and, at the same time, held a professorship of art theory at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg. He has also worked as a freelance curator on exhibitions and projects at numerous other locations, including Beirut, Hong Kong, Cairo, Cologne, Limerick and Rovereto.

 

Dziewior has also been active as an art critic and writer since 1991. His articles have appeared regularly in “Artforum” (New York), “Camera Austria” (Graz) and “Texte zur Kunst” (Berlin). He has published more than 50 books and catalogs on 20th and 21st century art.

 

Yilmaz Dziewior’s curatorial work is characterized by his decided interest in social issues, whereby special attention must be paid to his occupation with questions of identity politics and cultural attributions. It is against this background that he has increasingly addressed the works of artists from Africa, Latin America and Asia in major exhibitions. The inter-disciplinary approach that is already apparent in his dissertation can also be traced in his curatorial work, especially in exhibitions and projects about architecture as well as dance and theater. One basic premise of Yilmaz Dziewior’s approach is the analysis of the respective context, as expressed both in his experimental formats at the KUB Arena in Bregenz and his “Insert” series for the Kunstverein in Hamburg.

 

In the last 15 years, Yilmaz Dziewior has collaborated with artists including Cosima von Bonin, VALIE EXPORT, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Wade Guyton, Diango Hernández, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Barbara Kruger, Florian Pumhösl, Ed Ruscha and Haegue Yang in conjunction with major exhibitions. His group exhibitions included “Formalism. Modern Art, Today”, “This Place is My Place – Desired Spaces”, “Whose History”, “That’s the Way We do it. The Techniques and Aesthetic of Appropriation” and “Love is Colder than Capital”.

 

In February 2015, Yilmaz Dziewior takes over as director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.