Defne Ayas

Defne Ayas was the Director and Curator of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Before that, Ayas worked as a director of programs 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 biennial’s collaborative partnerships with a consortium of 80+ cultural institutions across New York City and (co-) organized acclaimed projects and programs with an international roster of artists, architects, curators, and writers. She remains a curator-at- large at Performa. In September 2012, Ayas co-curated the 11th Baltic Triennale (with Benjamin Cook, LUX).