The 8th Berlin Biennale will take place in spring 2014.

Juan A. Gaitán (Canada/Colombia) is an independent writer and curator, currently based in Mexico City and Berlin. He is trained as an artist and art historian at University of British Columbia and Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver (Canada). Between January 2009 and December 2011, he was curator at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and between September 2011 and June 2012 adjunct professor in the Curatorial Practice Program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco (USA).

During the 2006 – 2008 period, he was on the Board of Directors of the Western Front Society, and worked as external curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver. His writings have been published in several journals, including Afterall, Arte al Dia, Art Nexus, Canadian Art, The Exhibitionist, Fillip, and Mousse. His most recent exhibition, Material Information, spans three venues in Bergen (Norway), and looks for a renewed critical approach to the contemporary global distribution of labor from the perspective of arts and crafts. He is presently member of the acquisitions committee at FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunquerke (France).

The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is since its fourth edition one of the institutions supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as „outstanding cultural event“. The support of 2.5 Million Euros per edition ensures planning stability, enabling the organizers to address issues of content in an experimental way.

Curators have been:

• 1st Berlin Biennale (1998): Klaus Biesenbach with Nancy Spector, and Hans Ulrich Obrist
• 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001): Saskia Bos
• 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004): Ute Meta Bauer
• 4th Berlin Biennale (2006): Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick
• 5th Berlin Biennale (2008): Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic
• 6th Berlin Biennale (2010): Kathrin Rhomberg
• 7th Berlin Biennale (2012): Artur Żmijewski together with associate curators Voina and Joanna Warsza