Jury 2022

Rachel Kent is the recently appointed CEO of the Bundanon Trust, which will launch its new Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning in 2022. Prior to this, she was the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia (2011-2021), leading its curatorial team, shaping the organisation’s artistic vision, and advocating for creative culture on national and international platforms.

Rachel has presented exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States and Canada, working with artists such as Yoko Ono, Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Tatsuo Miyajima, David Goldblatt, Cornelia Parker and Doug Aitken. Her exhibitions have been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; MCA San Diego; Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Rachel sits on editorial, academic and government advisory panels, and speaks and publishes widely on modern and contemporary art. She is the editor and author of multiple award-winning artist monographs, working with Prestel, Phaidon and Thames & Hudson.

Pablo del Val (b. 1964) has decades of experience as a cultural manager, curator, and director of contemporary art galleries around the world.

For the last 6 years he has held the position of Artistic Director of Art Dubai. Art Dubai has been a major catalyst in the local, regional and international conversations on art from the Middle East and surrounding region (MENASA – Middle East, North Africa & South Asia), helping to put art from these territories onto the global map. As one of the world’s most international art fairs, Art Dubai has further expanded its commitment to cultivating a culture of discovery, offering exciting new global perspectives and broadening conversations about art beyond traditional western-led geographical scopes and narratives.

Previously del Val has held the position of Artistic Director of ZONA MACO, Mexico City International Contemporary Art Fair (2012 – 2015) as well as the Director at La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Mucia, Spania (2009 – 2013).

Qiu Zhijie (b. 1969) is dean and professor at the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and professor of the School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art. As an artist, Qiu Zhijie is known for his calligraphy and ink painting, photography, video, installation and performance works. His art is representational of a new kind of experimental communication between the Chinese literati tradition and contemporary art, as well as social participation and the power of self-liberation within art. As an art writer, Qiu Zhijie has published several books including: The Image and Post Modernism (2002), Give Me a Mask (2003), The Limit of Freedom (2003), The Photography after Photography (2004), On Total Art (2012).

He was the curator of the first video art exhibition in China in 1996 and curated a series of “Post-sense Sensibility” exhibitions during 1999 and 2005 promoting the young generation of Chinese artists. In 2012 he was the chief curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale “Reactivation”, and in 2017 the chief curator of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. Qiu Zhijie was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize administered by the Guggenheim Foundation due to his work of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” at the Art China Awards in 2009 and was nominated for the same award in 2016.

His works are included in major museum collections and institutions around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Foundation by Christian Dior, Ullens Foundation, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, and the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney.