Christl Baur is the Head of the Ars Electronica Festival & Program Director, where she leads as an interdisciplinary researcher specializing in the convergence of art and science. She has curated and co-produced a wide range of exhibitions and performances, notably including the annual thematic exhibitions of the Ars Electronica Festival. Baur’s expertise extends to various fields, including video art, new media technologies, computer art, biotechnology, and interactive art and she teaches at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.
Baur’s contributions are not limited to practical endeavors but also extend to academic publications. She has authored thought-provoking texts such as “Art with a Lifespan: Digital Technologies and the Preservation of Bio Art” and “Intersections of Media Art & the Art Market,” which have been featured in the Journal of Visual Art Practice. Furthermore, Baur’s expertise has made her a highly sought-after speaker, gracing prestigious conferences such as ISEA, VINCI, Montreal Digital Week, and Vienna Art Week with her insights. In addition, her contributions to the field of media art have been acknowledged through her participation in renowned international juries, including the NTU Global Digital Art Prize Singapore, the Global Creative Technology Design Award, and she serves on the jury of the German Federal Cultural Foundation as well as on the Linz Municipal Cultural Advisory Board.
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SABINE HIMMELSBACH
Director of HEK (House of Electronic Arts)
Since 2012, Sabine Himmelsbach is director of HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel. After studying art history in Munich, she worked for galleries in Munich and Vienna from 1993–1996 and later became project manager for exhibitions and conferences for the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria. In 1999 she became exhibition director at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.
From 2005–2011 she was the artistic director of the Edith-Russ-House for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany. 2011 she curated gateways. Art and Networked Culture for the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn as part of the European Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011 program. Her exhibitions at HEK in Basel include Ryoji Ikeda (2014), Poetics and Politics of Data (2015), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Preabsence (2016), unREAL (2017), Lynn Hershman Leeson: Anti-Bodies, Eco-Visionaries (2018), Entangled Realities. Living with Artificial Intelligence (2019), Making FASHION Sense and Real Feelings. Emotion and Technology (2020), Anne Dukhee Jordan, Collective Worldbuilding: Art in the Metaverse, Exploring the Decentralized Web: Art on the Blockchain (2023), Libby Heaney: Quantum Soup (2024) or Quantum Visions (2025).
2021 she realized the Online exhibition and conference Hybrid by Nature. Human.Machine.Interaction in collaboration with Goethe-Instituts of East Asia. In 2022 she curates Earthbound – In Dialoge with Nature for the European Capital of Culture Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg.
As a writer and lecturer she is dedicated to topics related to media art and digital culture. In 2025, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel for her commitment to making scientific questions understandable to a broad audience through the language of art.
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HONOR HARGER
Director of ArtScience Museum
Honor Harger is a curator and cultural leader working at the intersection of art, science, and futures thinking. Originally from New Zealand and based in Singapore, she has spent more than two decades at the forefront of media art, emerging technology, and interdisciplinary cultural practice.
From 2014-2026, she was Director of ArtScience Museum in Singapore, where she built one of Asia’s most ambitious programmes at the meeting point of contemporary art, science, and technology. She is also the Founding Director and Chief Curator of Futures Imagined, a studio focused on cultural strategy, curatorial thinking, and the futures of art and technology.
Earlier in her career, Honor directed Lighthouse in Brighton, one of the UK’s leading centres for digital art and culture, and held key roles at transmediale in Berlin, Tate Modern in London, and Artspace in Aotearoa New Zealand. At Tate Modern, she established the institution’s first online broadcasting programme, which evolved into Tate Media, and curated events and concerts exploring the interface between art, science, technology, and design. She has also worked on projects across Germany, Latvia, Finland, India, Croatia, and South Africa.
Honor Harger has curated and produced more than 80 large-scale exhibitions, including Another World is Possible (2025–26), New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed (2023–24), 2219: Futures Imagined (2019–20), and The Universe and Art (2017) to name a small selection.
She has given talks at conferences ranging from TED, to World Architecture Festival to Lift, and delivered lectures at institutions including the European Space Agency, the Centre Pompidou, the American Film Institute, and the National Museum of South Africa.
Honor’s work is driven by a commitment to make the world a better place through culture and science, expanding how we imagine, understand, and act within possible futures. Her practice is grounded in the conviction that artists working at the edge of technology offer an early signal of where society is heading.
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MASSIMILIANO GIONI
Artistic Director of the New Museum
Massimiliano Gioni is the Artistic Director of both the New Museum in New York and the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan. He has curated a range of international exhibitions, including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); 10,000 Lives, the 8th Gwangju Biennial; The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, the first New Museum Triennial (co-curated with Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman) (2009); the 4th Berlin Biennale (co-curated with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick) (2006); and Manifesta 5 (co-curated with Marta Kuzma) (2004). At the New Museum, he has organized solo presentations of artists including Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Nicole Eisenman, Theaster Gates, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Faith Ringgold, and many others, and at the Trussardi Foundation he has curated various solo shows and public art projects with, among others, Paweł Althamer, Tacita Dean, Fischli and Weiss, Paul McCarthy, Paola Pivi, Anri Sala, and Tino Sehgal.
More recently, he curated New Humans: Memories of the Future (2026), the inaugural exhibition of the expanded New Museum, designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu. Other major international exhibitions by Gioni include: Fata Morgana, Fondazione Trussardi, Palazzo Morando (2025); The Warmth of Other Suns. Stories of Global Displacement in collaboration with the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (2019) and Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and the Object in the Work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, Even at Museo Jumex (2019). He also served on the advisory committee for the posthumous realization of Okwui Enwezor’s exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2021). In 2024 he curated the survey of Pipilotti Rist’s work in Doha, Qatar, and in 2021 he organized George Condo: The Picture Gallery, the artist’s first retrospective in China, at the Long Museum in Shanghai. He frequently collaborates with the Aishti Foundation in Beirut where he has curated numerous exhibitions since 2015.
He has also contributed to a variety of publications including Artforum, Flash Art (for which he served as US editor from 1999 to 2003), Frieze, Parkett, and Tate Etc. He directed the independent art magazines The Wrong Times and Charley with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick. He is the commissioning editor of 2000 Words, a series of monographic books published by the Dakis Joannou Collection and Deste Foundation.
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MOON KYUNGWON & JEON JOON
Artist
Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joon have worked as an artist duo since dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel (2012), producing long-term projects that examine the social and political contradictions, historical conflicts, climate crisis, and rapid transformations facing humanity today — and the role art might play within them.
Their landmark project News from Nowhere (2012–), a transdisciplinary participatory platform, has been presented at major institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago (2015), Migros Museum Zurich (2015), the Korean Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), Tate Liverpool (2018–2019), MMCA Seoul (2012–2022), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa (2022), and Art Basel Unlimited (2023). Their works are held in collections including Tate Modern and MMCA. Ongoing projects are currently being developed in Tokyo and Riyadh.
Moon Kyungwon is a Professor of the College of Art & Design at Ewha Womans University, Seoul. Jeon Joon lives and works between Busan and Seoul.
NOMINATORS
MANUPORN LUENGARAM
RIZKI LAZUARDI
TAN HUI KOON
IRIS LONG
JOEL KWONG
RITIKA BISWAS
WU DAR-KUEN
DO TUONG LINH
LEONHARD BARTOLOMEUS
SUBASH THEBE LIMBU
SHWETAL A. PATEL
zzyw
exonemo
NOMINATORS
MANUPORN LUENGARAM
Manuporn Luengaram is a Bangkok-based curator and researcher with nearly three decades of experience in the regional art scene. Her extensive career includes co-curating the Thailand Biennale Chiang Rai 2023 and holding key roles at art institutions such as Dib Bangkok, the Jim Thompson Art Center, The Queen’s Gallery, and About Art Related Activities.
Manuporn formerly managed Arts Network Asia (ANA), a Singapore-based arts network and grant body dedicated to fostering cross-border collaboration and exchange within Asia. As a researcher, she co-edited the anthology of Southeast Asian Contemporary Art (Thai edition), published by Thailand’s Ministry of Culture (2015) and served on the editorial committee for National Gallery Singapore’s The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader (2023).
NOMINATORS
RIZKI LAZUARDI
Rizki Lazuardi works extensively with moving images and expanded cinema. His artistic practice often sheds light on the idea of institutional and state power embedded in images. Institutional archives and footage of tangible media have been frequently utilized in his films and installation. His latest exhibition and screening include Singapore Biennale Pure Intention 2025, Lingua Franca at Tokyo Art and Space Hongo and Beyond Provenance at Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. Apart from his studio practice, Lazuardi curates and advises programs for film festivals, among others, Berlinale Forum, Hamburg Short Films Festivals, and Image Forum Tokyo. He finished his postgrad in film at the HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg. Lazuardi lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia.
NOMINATORS
TAN HUI KOON
Tan Hui Koon is currently the chief senior curator of the National Art Gallery Malaysia’s Collection and Conservation Section. Since 2011 as an institution curator, her diverse curatorial practices included community art projects, National Collections Permanent Exhibitions, artist solo shows, SEA new media and contemporary exhibitions. She was one of the invited jurors for UOB Painting of the Year 2020. From 2022 to the present, she focuses on the National Collection acquisitions committee, preventive and curative conservation laboratory practice, research on National Cultural and Arts Properties safeguard policies and networks.
She obtained a Diploma in Visual and Digital Art from Limkokwing University, BA (Hon) in Fine Art from University Science Malaysia (USM) in 2007. Six-Month Conservation Training on Cultural Property (Diploma) from the National Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC), Ministry of Culture of India (2024–2025).
NOMINATORS
IRIS LONG
Iris Long is a writer and curator whose work explores the megastructures of science and technology in China and the psycho-geography of techno-science. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Advanced Practices Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a 2022–2023 Berggruen Fellow, Swissnex Fellow, Fellow at the Royal Astronomical Society. Her curatorial projects span art, science, and technology. Her research has been presented internationally at institutions such as the Warburg Institute, UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, ISEA, ZKM and so on.
NOMINATORS
JOEL KWONG
Joel Kwong is an international media art curator and producer. She is the Programme Director for Microwave (www.microwavefest.net), an experienced practitioner in media arts & advertising for more than 18 years. She is also the founder of SIBYLS, a creative consultation & production company since 2018. She has been curating numerous media art projects, most recent projects include In the Time of Hope media art x mental wellness showcase 2026, HKDI Gallery presents Pluriversal Futures 2025–2026, Microwave 2025 annual edition Walk Through Walls, Arts Tech 4.0 the Light House, Through the lens of at Chengdu Art Museum 2024 etc. She has been given talks in various festivals and institutions, including SIGGRAPH Asia, Shenzhen Media Art Festival, ACT Festival in Gwangju, Korea, National University of Taiwan, the University of Electro-communications in Tokyo, FILMART, Entertainment EXPO in Hong Kong, etc.
NOMINATORS
RITIKA BISWAS
Ritika Biswas (b. 1995) is a curator, artistic researcher, and writer from Kolkata who lives and works nomadically. She works on and via ecological criticism, experimental kinships, necropolitics, and questions of justice. Along with artist collective Chander Haat, she will curate the next Bengal Biennale (2026–27).
Holding a Liberal Arts degree from Yale-NUS College and an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge, Ritika was a curator at New Art Exchange Gallery (Nottingham, UK) from 2019–2021 and Artistic Director for the 2021 Sea Art Festival, Non-/Human Assemblages (Busan Biennale).
Selected recent exhibitions include —scape (Gallery 88 Mumbai), Spectres of Our Own Making (15th Gwangju Biennale), Nine Nodes of Non-Being (421 Arts Campus Abu Dhabi), the digital research platform Littoral Chronicle (2023–ongoing). She was the 2024 Curator-in-Residence at Fondation Fiminco, Paris and 2022 International Research Fellow at MMCA Seoul.
NOMINATORS
WU DAR-KUEN
He currently serves as Director of the Contemporary Art Platform and General Administration at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB). Previously, he was Director of Taipei Artist Village and Treasure Hill Artist Village, Founding Chairman of the Taiwan Art Space Alliance (TASA), and Chief Curator at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. His practice bridges art and social engagement, reflecting on Asian social conditions and exploring “art without borders” amid globalization and neoliberalism.
He has completed residencies at NIFCA (Finland, 2002), Location One and ISCP (New York, 2005–2006), Tokyo Wonder Site (2008), and Open Space Bae (Busan, 2009). In 2004, he received Asian Cultural Council grants and the Yageo Tech-Art Award. Notable curatorial projects include Republic without People (2011, Jury’s Special Prize, 10th Taishin Arts Award), Roppongi Crossing 2016 (Mori Art Museum), and recent exhibitions at C-LAB and international biennales.
NOMINATORS
DO TUONG LINH
Đỗ Tường Linh is an independent curator, researcher, and writer with academic training from VNUFA, SOAS (Alphawood Scholar), and Bard CCS (2025). Her work since 2005 spans the 12th Berlin Biennale and diverse exhibitions and collaborative art projects across Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Europe and beyond.
NOMINATORS
LEONHARD BARTOLOMEUS
Leonhard Bartolomeus (barto) is a curator at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM). After graduating, he joined ruangrupa (and later became part of Gudskul Ekosistem). Working with ruangrupa, he developed an interest in the intersection between art, education, and community engagement, which then influenced many of his curatorial projects, such as Kolektif Kurator Kampung (2017–2021), Kurikulab: Moving Class (2021, YCAM), The Flavour of Power (2022, YCAM), Speculative Library (2023, YCAM), Iida Kaido Kikitori Art Project (2024), Dance Floor as Study Room (2024, YCAM), PROJECT MRT: Natureless Solution (2025, YCAM), and Roppongi Crossing 2025 (2025, Mori Art Museum).
NOMINATORS
SUBASH THEBE LIMBU
Subash Thebe Limbu is a Yakthung (Limbu) artist from Yakthung Nation (Limbuwan), located in present-day eastern Nepal. He works with film, sound, music, and painting. His Yakthung name is ᤋᤠᤱᤛᤠᤱ Tangsang (Sky)
Drawing from socio-political issues, resistance and science/speculative fiction, his works engage the notion of time, climate change, and indigeneity through the critical lens of Adivasi Futurisms, a framework he has been developing over several years.
His recent projects, Ningwasum (2021) and Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous (2023), have been presented at major international platforms including Tate Modern (London), the Asia Pacific Triennial (Brisbane), and the Sharjah Biennale (Sharjah), among others.
Subash is a co-founding member of Yakthung Cho (Yakthung Art Society), and is currently based between Kathmandu (Newa-Tamsaling) and the United Kingdom.
NOMINATORS
SHWETAL A. PATEL
Shwetal A. Patel, PhD works at the intersection of visual art and interdisciplinary research. A founding member of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, he has played a central role in its development and, since 2015, has served as a consultant to the Kochi Biennale Foundation, focusing on international partnerships and programme development. In 2020, he completed a practice-based PhD at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton), examining how biennales are created and sustained. He has lectured at institutions including Zürich University of the Arts, Royal College of Art, and University of Exeter.
He is also a trustee of the Milton Keynes Museum, Kakar Centre for Psychoanalysis and Culture, and Coventry Biennial, and divides his time between the UK, Belgium, and India.
NOMINATORS
zzyw
zzyw, founded by Yang Wang and Zhenzhen Qi in New York in 2014, is a research and art initiative that serves as an umbrella name for both of their collaborative and individual projects. zzyw leverages critical technical practice and speculative inquiry to challenge hegemonic technological constructs. Through software prototypes, writing, and pedagogical initiatives, zzyw explores the cultural, political, ecological, and educational imprints of modern computing systems while envisioning alternative, more communal and ethical technical futures.
NOMINATORS
exonemo
exonemo is an artist duo formed by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa in 1996. Active since the early Internet era and now based in New York, they traverse the boundaries between digital and analog, physical and informational realms. Their work explores the transformations of a networked society with sharp critical insight and humor. Recipients of the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica (2006) and Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs Art Encouragement Prize (2021), they have gained international recognition, including an online exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2019) and a major solo show at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2020). They also organize “The Internet Yami-Ichi,” a flea market of internet culture held in over 30 cities worldwide.
