Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Swedish art curator.

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand with 'Bad Woman' mask by Katya Grokhovsky. Photo: Elsa Hammarén
Alma mater

Biography

edit

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand studied at Stockholm University and at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She has worked as an art critic since the beginning of the 2010s writing for Vogue Scandinavia, LIFE, BOMB and Cultured, among others.

In 2014, she founded the English-language online magazine Cultbytes, which focuses on arts and culture, and serves as its editor-in-chief and publisher.[1]

Together with Bianca-Abdi Boragi and Katherine Adams, she curated "Contact Zone,"[2] the 2nd edition of The Immigrant Artist Biennial in New York and New Jersey, featuring 55 artists[3] between 2023 and 2024. In connection with the biennal, she also worked with Fotografiska in New York.[4] Since 2023, she is the deputy director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial.[5]

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand curated the exhibition "Gunilla Lundahl: Social Justice, Freedom, and Beauty" with artistic direction by Sanna Fried at ArkDes 2023.[6] The exhibition was connected to the book Curating beyond the mainstream which she edited together with Maria Lind and several other curators. Anna Mikaela Ekstrand wrote about the architecture critic and curator Gunilla Lundahl and her work with the exhibition Modellen (1968) at Moderna Museet, the research group Bo i Gemenskap, and her time as an editor at Svensk Form.

Within the framework of the same project, she co-edited with Joanna Warsza the book Asymmetries in Public Art, where she interviewed American artists who paved the way for the genre of public art in the 90s including Suzanne Lacey, Mark Dion and Andrea Fraser.

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand has curated exhibitions at museums and galleries in Stockholm, Vienna, and New York with several feminist artists including ORLAN, Ayana Evans, Anna Ting Möller, and Katya Grokhovsky.[7] She has interviewed Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Chellis Baird, and other artists.

Bibliography

edit
  • (co-editor) Assuming Asymmetries: Conversations on Curating Public Art Projects of the 1980s and 1990s. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2022. ISBN 978-3-95679-612-8
  • (co-editor) Curating Beyond the Mainstream: The Practices of Carlos Capelán, Elisabet Haglund, Gunilla Lundahl, and Jan-Erik Lundström. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2022. ISBN 978-3-95679-613-5
  • “How Panoply Performance Lab Has Supported Me and How You Can Support the Performance Art Community” in Institution is a Verb: A Panoply Performance Lab Compilation. Brooklyn: The Operating System, 2022. ISBN 978-3-95679-613-5
  • (editor) Field Guide: The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone. New York, 2023. (downloadable via The Immigrant Artist Biennial website https://www.theimmigrantartistbiennial.com/s/TIAB-Field-Guide-Part-I.pdf)

References

edit
  1. ^ Schiller, Valeria (12 September 2024). "Why do we love to predict? Inside 'Clairvoyant' at Ceysson-Bénétière New York". Vogue Scandinavia.
  2. ^ Irwin, Michael (13 June 2023). "48 Artists to Join The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023". Ocula.
  3. ^ Lillegraven, Håkon (13 October 2023). "Migrating Bodies and Containers of Selvesk". C-Print.
  4. ^ Israel, Alexandral (13 June 2023). "Brooklyn Ballet Fundraise for Immigrant Artists at Fotografiska New York". Cultbytes.
  5. ^ "The Immigrant Artist Biennial Team". The Immigrant Artist Biennial.
  6. ^ Habib Engqvist, Jonatan (6 June 2023). "Curating beyond, or against the stream". Cultbytes.
  7. ^ "Clairvoyant Exhibition at Ceysson & Bénétière". Ceysson & Bénétière.
edit

}}