Charlotte Bank and Delphine Leccas launched and curated the Visual Arts Festival Damascus an independent art event comprising exhibitions, lectures, workshops, artwork production support and art residencies (Damascus 2010, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012, and DEPO-Istanbul 2013).
Charlotte Bank
Charlotte Bank is an art historian and curator, living and working between Berlin and (till 2011) Damascus. Her work is focused on modern and contemporary art from the Middle East with a special emphasis on the independent contemporary art scene since 2000 in its global context.
She curates exhibitions and video and film programs across Europe and the Middle East and is a member of the curatorial team of the Visual Arts Festival Damascus, an independent art festival launched in 2010 in Damascus that now exists as a nomadic platform for artistic exchange.
In 2012 she is launching the FORUM for new arab art, a project that is conceived as a series of events (exhibitions, performances, film and video screenings, artists’ talks and panels) focusing on recent artistic production from the Arab countries and diaspora.
Charlotte Bank publishes regularly, both in online and print media
Selection of projects:
Virtual Agoras. Artistic video activism in Syria 2012, 7th Berlin Biennale (KunstWerke, Berlin) / EMAF European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück, Germany) / Impak Headquarters (Utrecht, The Netherlands) / De Balie (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Mapping Creative Internet Activism in the Arab World 2012 Impakt Festival (Utrecht, The Netherlands); Behind Walls. Recent films from Syria 2011 Arsenal Institute of Film and Video Art (Berlin, Germany) / Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art (Copenhagen, Denmark), Fluid Spaces. Experimental Arab short films and videos 2011 IfA Gallery (Berlin, Germany); Borderlines. Deconstructing Exile 2010 Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Sites of Memories. experimental film and video from Syria 2010-11 Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde, Denmark) / Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt am Main, Germany); A Silent Cinema: Highlights of Syrian Cinema 2009 Arsenal Institute of Film and Video Art (Berlin, Germany), Positions. Experimental short films and videos from Lebanon, Palestine and Syria 2008 Casino Luxembourg forum d’art contemporain (City of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
Delphine Leccas
Curator and cultural programmer, based in Damascus from 1998 till 2011, Delphine Leccas is the co-founding member of AIN association, created to support contemporary art.
In Syria, responsible for the cultural program of the French cultural centre, she created then maintained the first photography and video international festival in Damascus: Les Journées de la Photographie (2001-2007).
She then worked as exhibitions manager during the cultural year Damascus Arab Capital of Culture and proposed a program of art restoration, refurbishment of art galleries, and a cycle of exhibitions of the national art collections entitled Retrospective of Fine Arts in Syria, followed by a collection of Syrian art publications (2008).
With AIN she curated several exhibitions presented at the Thessaloniki Biennale (Syrian Icons, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, 2011), the 15th Biennale de la Méditerranée (Thessaloniki, 2011) and the Center for New Art (Hassakeh, 2010). Currently she’s touring an exhibition entitled Syrian anonymous exhibition (WEYA, New Art Exchange, Nottingham; Cantieri d’arte, Viterbo; La Fabbrica del Vappore, Milano and Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna) and directing a publication on Syrian artists: Syrie, l’art en armes (La Martinière Edition, Paris).
In the past years, she was involved in the organisation of important international artistic events such as Meeting Points 6 in 2011, a contemporary art festival curated by Okwui Enwezor and presented by the association Yatf (Brussels) at Beirut Art Center; Sharjah Biennial in 2011, exhibitions of Syrian artists presented by the Atassi Gallery (Damascus); Music on the Road: a visual journey, a visual arts and music program comprising weekly art residencies followed by a street performance presented during the summer 2010; and The Jameel Prize Exhibition in 2010 , exhibitions presented in Damascus by the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).