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Born in Düsseldorf in 1965, Nicolaus Schafhausen is a curator, director, author and editor of numerous publications on contemporary art. Since 2011 he has been the Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts, an initiative of Shorefast, a charitable foundation based in Newfoundland, Canada dedicated to finding alternative solutions for the revitalisation of areas prone to emigration. Schafhausen is the Artistic Director of Tell me about yesterday tomorrow (November 2019 – August 2020), an exhibition at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism about the future of the past. He has curated numerous international exhibitions such as Media City Seoul 2010 and the Dutch Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. He was the curator of the German Pavilion for the 52^nd (2007) and 53^rd Venice Biennale (2009) and curator of the Kosovo Pavilion for the 56^th Venice Biennale (2015). Schafhausen also co-curated the 6^th Moscow Biennale in 2015. In addition to curating exhibitions, national pavilions and other projects, Schafhausen has led institutions such as the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. He was Founding Director of the European Kunsthalle, conceived as a project to examine the conditions and structures of contemporary art institutions independent of local government mandates. In 2019 he stepped down as Director of the Kunsthalle Wien, a position he held since 2012, for political reasons, observing that the future of such cultural institutions was thrown into question by rising nationalist policies in Austria and elsewhere. He has called for stronger support from independent state institutions and cultural administrations in times of right-wing populist movements. In the future, Schafhausen aims to work beyond the boundaries of conventional institutions.

Monika Szewczyk is director of De Appel, Amsterdam. She has been curator for documenta 14 (2015-2017) in Athens and Kassel; Visual Arts Program Curator at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2012-2014); Head of Publications at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (2008–2011); these following formative years in Vancouver, where she studied International Relations and Art History at the University of British Columbia and held positions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery as well Emily Carr University. Along this path she has lectured, led seminars, organized exhibitions and published writing as well as undertaken editing collaborations, most recently for the 10th issue of the Athens-based magazine South as a State of Mind (Maintenance), with founding director and editor-in-chief, Marina Fokidis. She is a member of the Advisory Board for Fogo Island Arts.