Defne Ayas is a curator and educator specializing in new media and performance and cross-cultural projects. Based in Shanghai since 2006, Ayas works as a director of programs to Arthub Asia, and as an art history instructor at New York University in Shanghai. Ayas is also curator of PERFORMA since 2004, the biennial of visual art performance with base in New York City, where she spends part of the year. Prior to joining PERFORMA, Ayas coordinated New Museum of Contemporary Art’s public- and new media-programming, including Airborne, the exhibition she co-curated with Free103point and Anne Barlow; One Block Radius- the psychogeographic research project she commissioned by Glowlab (in 2004), artists presentations such as by Cory Arcangel, Lansing-Dreiden (in 2004), among many others, and critical debates relating to contemporary art and new media, including the exploratory inter-disciplinary roundtables for the Museum as a Hub initiative. (2005).
Ayas is currently developing Moon Academy by Alicia Framis for presentation in Shanghai; Double Infinity- a collaborative exhibition between Arthub and Van Abbe Museum at the time of Shanghai Expo and Blind Dates with Neery Melkonian (November 2010 at Pratt Gallery). Ayas’ recently curated projects for Performa09 include live works and presentations by Ahmet Ogut, Yeondoo Jung, Rabih Mroue, Khatt Foundation, Dexter SInister, Paul Elliman, Guido va der Werve, and Alicia Framis across Manhattan venues such as Asia Society, Art Production Fund Lab, PS122, Bidoun Magazine and prestigious Marshall Chess Club, once home to Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Ayas also directed Performa09’s Writing Live program for emerging art critics; 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); as well as Performa’s Futurism-related research seminars on architecture, graphic design, and noise music in China (March-June 2009). With Arthub’s Davide Quadrio, Ayas initiated and co-curated “The Making of the New Silk Roads,“ a highly acclaimed performative symposium featuring 35 artists, curators and scholars across Asia (BUG, Bangkok, August, 2009), “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, Feng Mengbo among others, in collaboration with Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation in 2008. At Performa07, Ayas presented acclaimed Beijing-based “Long March Project” with first-time live 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); 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 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’ contributions for the biennial, coordinating the Not For Sale panel series, and acting as artist liaison for artists such as Carey Young, Sislej Xhafa, Cliff Owens, and Melik Ohanian, while 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, and studying at de Appel in Amsterdam. In 2004, Ayas was the co-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?, White Box, NYC, in 2004. (both with Michele Thursz). 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 8th Shanghai Biennale, 8th Gwangju Biennial, Artissima, Center for Contemporary Art in Kabul, Artist Pension Trust and 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 Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Chinese in Americas (New York), and is an adjunct Faculty at New York University in Shanghai, teaching a course on contemporary art and new media in China.
Ayas has B.A. in Foreign Affairs, with focus on Middle Eastern and Russian Studies, from Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at University of Virginia, and a minor in Studio Art. She completed De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam and received her Masters from ITP at NYU.
