Curators

Spaces and Shadows - The Curators

Philip Cheah has directed the Singapore International Film Festival since 1990. He has also been a regular jury member for the International Federation of Film Critics at a variety of international film festivals, including those in Rotterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Brisbane, as well as for the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema. Cheah is editor of BigO, a magazine for pop culture in Singapore, a post he has held since 1986.

Gridthiya Gaweewong was born in Chiang Rai, Thailand, in 1964. She currently works as a freelance curator and is co-founder of the project 304, which focuses on multidisciplinary art projects by both local and international artists. Among other exhibitions, Gaweewong curated Alien(gener)ation (2000 – 2003 in Bangkok, Khonkaen and Chiang Mai) and Under Construction (Tokyo Opera City Gallery and Japan Foundation, Japan 2003). Presently she is concentrating her efforts on Mekong Laboratory, an exchange project including artists all the way from Bangkok to Barcelona.

Since January of 2005, Lydia Haustein is the head of department of Literature and Humanities and vice-director of the House of World Cultures, Berlin.

Dr. Haustein is Honorary Professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, and director of the international research project “Global Icons”. She has lectured at various colleges and universities, among others in Göttingen, Berlin, Karlsruhe, and has lectured and researched extensively in Asia, South America and Afrika. Lydia Haustein has authored Videokunst (2003) and co-edited Das Erbe der Bilder (1998). Her main fields of interest are art and the history of art in the context of globalization and and media theory.

Dieter Mack is professor of composition at the Academy of Music in Lübeck. Lecture series, composition fellowships and guest lectureships have taken him to a variety of regions in Indonesia, as well as to New Zealand. In addition to a large body of original compositions, Dieter Mack has published numerous texts on international music theory and the relationship between contemporary and traditional musical forms.

Shaheen Merali is head of the Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the House of World Cultures. Born in Tanzania of Indian descent, Shaheen Merali, an artist and curator, worked and taught at the University of Westminster and the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London until 2003. His art works have been shown in major exhibitions, including Out of India at the Queens Museum of Art and the Bronx Museum’s Transforming The Crown.

Born in Singapore of Chinese parents, Ong Keng Sen was first educated as a lawyer, but went on to study at the New York University School of Arts. He subsequently initiated a theatre studies programme at the National University of Singapore. In 1985 he founded the theatre troupe Theatre Works and has remained their artistic director up to the present day. Ong Keng Sen is a Fulbright Scholar and a member of the New York Asian Cultural Council.