(this page was last updated in December 2020)
Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland
PIPA 2017 Nominating Committee member
João Laia is the chief curator for exhibitions at Kiasma – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art; his projects explore the embedded relations between social structures, technology and representation. Recent projects include Máscaras (Masks) co-curated with Valentinas Klimašauskas and 10000 Years Later Between Venus and Mars (2017-18) at Oporto City Hall Gallery, In Free Fall (2019) at CaixaForum, Barcelona, Vanishing Point (2019) at Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon, Drowning in a Sea of Data (2019) and Transmissions from the Etherspace (2017) at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, foreign bodies (2018) at P420, Bologna, H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D (2016) at MMOMA – Moscow Museum of Modern Art; or Hybridize or Disappear (2015) at MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. Laia co-curated the 19th and 20th editions of the contemporary art festival Videobrasil (2014–18) at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo. Other exhibitions, performance programs and screenings were held at CCCB – Xcèntric (Barcelona), ZDB – Galeria Zé dos Bois and MAAT – Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon), DRAF – David Roberts Art Foundation, Delfina Foundation, South London Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery (London), Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro), Moderna Museet (Stockholm) and Kurzfilmtage – International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In 2012-13 Laia attended the post-graduate research program CuratorLab at Konstfack, Stockholm and in 2014 was part of the curatorial residency of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. He edited A Multiple Community (SESC publishing 2018), co-edited Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s monograph Spiral Forest (Mousse Publishing 2018) and writes for magazines such as Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike or Terremoto. Together with Klimašauskas, Laia is co-curating the 14th Baltic Triennial at the CAC in Vilnius (2021).