Anselm Franke was born in Heiligenberg, South Germany in 1978. He is currently a freelance curator and writer. He will curate the 2012 Taipei Biennial, and take the post as the head of visual art and film department of House of World Cultures Berlin from January, 2013.

In his early times, he worked as assistant director to German film-theatre and opera director Christoph Schlingensief, employed by the theatre Volksbühne in Berlin. From 2001 to 2006, he joined KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin as assistant curator. Afterwards, from late 2006 to late 2010, Anselm Franke was the director of Extra City Center for Contemporary Art, Antwerpen, Belgium (later renamed Extra City-Kunsthal Antwerpen). In 2008, he co-curated the Manifesta 7, and the 1st Brussels Biennale.

The 2012 Taipei Biennial will consist of an exhibition and a program of events, for which it will reach beyond the visual arts. Inspired by a recent book by Taiwanese literature scholar David Wang on the question of representation of history and the monstrosity of modern violence (The Monster that is History, 2009), the biennial will invoke a broader forum which, through an engagement with history, aims at negotiating perceptions of reality. (Image: Courtesy TFAM).