Amira Gad

Amira Gad is an art curator, writer, and editor in modern and contemporary art and architecture. She's currently Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Previously, she was Curator at Large (Arts Technologies) at KANAL - Centre Pompidou in Brussels, Head of Programs at LAS Art Foundation in Berlin (2020-2023), curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2014-2020), and Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam (2009-2014).

Quotes

• The performance bridges the gap between the physical, the digital and immaterial realms. In a way, looking at all the different elements that constitute your performance, I would argue that it inhabits the discursive space prompted by the physical space that engages its viewer?
  • [1]
• Writing, remembering, narrating history and – as with your work – performing history, becomes a duty and responsibility towards knowledge. But at the same time, this responsibility and the striving for knowledge is inherently akin to tensions.
  • [2]
• Derrida, in Writing and Difference, discusses the contradiction of simultaneously writing to remember and writing to forget and quotes Hegel: 'I will speak later about the profound differences between the person of sacrifice, who operates ignorant (unconscious) of the ramifications of what they are doing, and on the Sage (Hegel), who surrenders to a knowledge that, in their own eyes, is absolute.
  • [3]
• Nathan Witt's work is primarily interested in identifying value and meaning through the dissemination of visual culture and learned history. Since 2002, Witt has produced a varied body of work that includes texts as specific counter-images and counter-objects, focusing on the integrity of the motive and its manipulation; as well as defacing press releases, making books and drawing.
  • [4]
• His work is interested in looking at the material as a by-product, as well as questioning contemporary notions of participation and authorship. The research-based practices result in research-performance installations as with his more recent 'Non-Participation Performance' and 'Continuity' works. Over the last four years, Witt has been exploring seemingly disparate subjects in Occupied Palestine, Israel and Lebanon on his project 'A Interloper' which looks at the vernacular of religious calendars found in Jerusalem and originating in the Middle East, looking at different notions of bodily displacement.
  • [5]

• It is interesting to look at how the advent of technology can have an impact on museum practices and the works of contemporary artists.
• I thrive in challenges and finding ways to break down barriers.
  • [6] Interview with Amira Gad after her appointment as the new Conservator of Modern & Contemporary Art. 2024