Nicolas Bourriaud, born in 1965, is a curator and writer, and the Artistic Director of the 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024), and curated the 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019). He was part of the curatorial team of the first and second Moscow Biennials in 2005 and 2007.
Until 2021, he was the Director of Montpellier Contemporain (MoCo), France, an institution he created, gathering the La Panacée art centre, the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the new MoCo Museum, which opened in June 2019. He also founded and co-directed the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from 1999 to 2006, and was a founder advisor for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev (2003-2007). Following his work at the helm of the Palais de Tokyo, Bourriaud moved to London in 2007 where he was Gulbenkian Curator for Contemporary Art at Tate Britain in London until 2010. The following year, he headed the studies department at the Ministry of Culture in France, and he directed the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 2011 to 2015.
Bourriaud’s recent exhibitions include Crash Test, La Panacée (2018); Back to Mulholland Drive, La Panacée (2017); Wirikuta, MECA Aguascalientes, Mexico (2016); The Great Acceleration / Art in the Anthropocene, Taipei Biennial (2014); The Angel of History, Palais des Beaux-Arts (2013); Monodrome, Athens Biennial (2011) and Altermodern, Tate Triennial, London (2009). Bourriaud's published work include: The Exform (Verso, 2016); Radicant (Sternberg Press, 2009); Postproduction (Lukas & Sternberg, 2002); Formes de vie: L’art moderne et l’invention de soi (Denoel, 1999) and Relational Aesthetics (Presses du reel, 1998).
