MARRAKECH BIENNALE MAIN SITE

Curators, Carson Chan and Nadim Samman. Photo by item idem.

Carson Chan (b.1980, based in Berlin) is an architecture writer and curator. Chan studied design, history and theory of architecture at both Cornell and Harvard University, where he received a Master’s in the History and Theory of Architecture. After working at the Neue Nationalgalerie’s architecture exhibitions department in Berlin, he founded PROGRAM in 2006, a non-commercial initiative for art and architecture collaborations with Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. He has variously curated and overseen more than 30 international exhibitions of contemporary art and architecture. His writing on art, architecture and contemporary culture appears in books and periodicals worldwide, including Kaleidoscope, where he is Contributing Editor, and 032c (Berlin), where he is Editor-at-Large. Chan has interviewed a broad range of contemporary practitioners, including Thomas Demand, Udo Kittelmann, Adam Caruso, William T. Vollmann, MVRDV, Greg Lynn, Rick Owens, and David Simon. He has recently lectured at the Schaulager (Basel), GAMeC (Bergamo), 12th Venice Architecture Biennial/ Nordic Pavilion, Bund Deutsche Architekten (Berlin), 0047 (Oslo) and he will be speaking at the Fondazione Ratti (Como) this spring. Chan is an active advisor to several cultural institutions including DLD (Munich), Europan, and the Premio Furla – a biennial prize given to the most promising emerging artists in Italy. In 2008 he organized an evening of panel discussions at the Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin) with leading artists, architects and curators to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Mies van der Rohe building. He is currently working on a series of essays on exhibition making in both art and architecture.

Nadim Samman is an independent curator and art historian based in London. He read Philosophy at University College London before taking a doctorate at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has written for publications including Third Text, Immediations, The Art Newspaper, Art Review, Artchronika, Contemporary, Asian Affairs, Art India, Erotic Review, Naked Punch and WestEast. He has been an invited speaker at MoMA Warsaw, the 2009 Beijing Biennale, Christies and SoAs. He is active curatorially in London, Moscow, Berlin, Venice and Zurich.