Artists of the residencies
Vila 31 x Art Explora, Tirana

The new programme residences will host a dynamic cultural program designed in collaboration with local players, institutions, schools and associations, including exhibitions, workshops, film screenings, discussions, symposia and festivals open to all.

Some thirty artists will be selected each year by an international selection committee.

Residents 2024

First session - coming soon

No items found.

Second session - coming soon

No items found.

Third session - coming soon

No items found.

The 2024 selection committee

The selection committee is made up of leading figures from the worlds of art and research.
photo of selection committee member
Pierre Bal-Blanc (France)

Independent curator and essayist

See more
fermer / close

Pierre Bal-Blanc is an art critic and curator. Editor-in-chief of the magazine Bloc Notes (1998-2000), co-founder of the Design Mental agency, he directed the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny-sur-Orge (2003-2014).

Pierre Bal-Blanc was associate curator of Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. Resonating with the societal thought of Charles Fourier, he is developing the "Phalanstère Project", a series of in situ proposals that critically restructure the logics of labor accumulation.

The most important aspect of his curatorial work is "de-gentrification", inspired by the philosophical work of Pierre Klossowski.

Pierre Bal-Blanc's projects regularly address the paradoxes of perversion and transgression, of the living and the object, through the processes of industrialization and production.

photo of selection committee member
Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath (Lebanon / Germany)

Directors of Hamburger Bahnhof: National Gallery for Contemporary Art, Berlin

See more
fermer / close

Till Fellrath and Sam Bardaouil have been curators and co-directors of Hamburger Bahnhof: Berlin's Museum of Contemporary Art since 2008.

Together they founded the multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented in Munich and New York.

They were curators of the 2022 Lyon Biennale, and curators of the French Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, as well as affiliated curators at Berlin's Gropius Bau until 2021.

Their exhibitions have been shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Gwangju and Busan art museums in South Korea, Tate Liverpool and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.

photo of selection committee member
Adela Demetja (Albania)

Curator, author and director of Tirana Art Lab - Contemporary Art Center, Albania

See more
fermer / close

Adela Demetja is an Albanian curator born in Tirana.

She is the director of Tirana Art Lab - Center for Contemporary Art, which she founded in 2010.

As a freelance curator, she has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and with institutions such as Tirana's National Art Gallery, Kosovo's National Art Gallery, Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater and Portland's Institute for Contemporary Research.

She curated the Albanian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, represented by Lumturi Blloshmi.

She is the founder and director of programme "Curating with Care", an alternative programme conservation training program based in Tirana.

photo of selection committee member
Katerina Gregos (Greece)

Curator, lecturer, educator. Director of ΕΜΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens.

See more
fermer / close

Katerina Gregos is a curator and writer. Since 2021, she has been director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMΣT), in Athens.

For over 20 years, her curatorial work has explored the relationship between art, society and politics, with a particular focus on issues of democracy, human rights, economics, ecology, crises and changes in global production circuits. As an independent curator, she has organized Riga, Manifesta and Goteborg.

She has also curated three national pavilions at the Venice Biennale: Denmark (2011), Belgium (2015) and Croatia (2019).

This year, she is curator of the Greek pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. She divides her time between Athens and Brussels.

photo of selection committee member
Alicia Knock (France)

Curator, Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris

See more
fermer / close

Alicia Knock has been a curator for contemporary creation at the Centre Pompidou since 2015.

Her work focuses on modern and contemporary art from Africa and Central Europe, with a particular emphasis on acquisitions and exhibitions.

In 2018, she created the "Cercle international Afrique" of the Friends of the Centre Pompidou.

She seeks to propose innovative, creative and forward-looking exhibition formats that question the museum of tomorrow from a decolonial perspective. Her work is also committed to giving greater visibility to women artists.

She has been appointed curator of the Albanian pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

She has worked with numerous art institutions, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and MoMA PS1 in New York.

photo of selection committee member
Hans Ulrich Obrist (United Kingdom and Switzerland)

Art historian, contemporary art critic, curator and artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London

See more
fermer / close

Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1968. Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.

Previously, he was curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first exhibition "World Soup, The Kitchen Show" in 1991, he has organized over 300 exhibitions.

Obrist has lectured worldwide at academic and art institutions, and contributed to Artforum, AnOther Magazine, Cahiers d'Art, and 032C; he is a regular contributor to Mousse and Kaleidoscope and writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst.

In 2011, he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence and, in 2015, the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a member of the Art Explora selection committee for residencies in Paris.