Katya García-Antón appointed Director
Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Nedre gate 7
0551 Oslo
Norway
The Board of OCA is proud to announce the appointment of Katya García-Antón as new director who will lead the institution for the next four years. After a comprehensive selection process, involving several national and international candidates, we are confident that Katya García-Antón is the right person to continue the outstanding level of work established and maintained by the two former directors since the inception of the foundation in 2001.
Katya García-Antón is an English-Spanish curator. Having trained in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, she combines academic excellence with a knowledge of an immense range of artistic disciplines. She has been affiliated with several major international art institutions, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Museu d’Arte Moderno de São Paulo, Brazil; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and IKON, Birmingham. She curated the Spanish contribution to the São Paulo Biennial in 2004 and was responsible for a section of the Prague Biennial in 2005. García-Antón has organised and curated over fifty exhibitions of art, design and architecture, featuring both well-established and young, emerging artists. She has served on the editorial board of Third Text magazine, and has been an art critic for the BBC World Service and for various international art magazines, as well as contributing to numerous catalogues and monographs. Among her wide-ranging curatorial activities, we might mention her contribution to the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011 (Dora Garcia’s The Inadequate) and Gestures in Time (co-curated with Lara Khaldi) and the flagship exhibition of the very first edition of the Qalandiya International Biennial in Palestine in 2012. Amongst other things, her work is characterised by an interest in investigating exhibition forms and art contexts outside the mainstream. García-Antón’s critical, political and subtle approach to contemporary art, her ability to work outside the established institutional framework and to reflect on perspectives that reach beyond the Western world is in line with OCA’s mandate and aspirations.
Katya García-Antón has a keen interest in the diversity of thought and practices that characterises the art scene across Norway, as well as its place within the globalised world. Her long management experience, belief in cooperation, artistic authority, academic expertise and international networking will undoubtedly allow her to negotiate constructively between the various communities that OCA serves and the ambitions it has. We therefore firmly believe the dialogue between the Norwegian and the international artistic realms will develop along new and innovative lines under García-Antón’s knowledgeable leadership, and we look forward to the next four years with great joy and excitement.
For press inquiries, please contact OCA at press [at] oca.no.
About the Office for Contemporary Art Norway
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is a foundation created by The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in autumn 2001. The main aim of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway is to develop collaborations in contemporary art between Norway and the international art scene. The Office for Contemporary Art Norway aims to become a key contributor to the discourses of contemporary art.
