Ute Meta Bauer

Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is a curator of exhibitions and presentations on contemporary art, film, video, and sound that connect artistic work with other disciplines. Since 2013, she is Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and a professor in the School of Art, Design and Media. From 2012-13, she served as Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, where she was the Founding Director of the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) (2009–12) and Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program (2005–09). In 2015, she co-curated Joan Jonas: They Came to Us Without a Word with MIT List Centre for Visual Arts Director Paul C. Ha, first presented at the US Pavilion of the 56^th Venice Biennale. The exhibition received Honorary Mention for Best National Pavilion by their International Jury and was presented at NTU CCA Singapore in 2016 with the generous support of the US Embassy in Singapore.

At NTU CCA Singapore, she curated and co-curated solo and group shows of the late American artist Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued (2015); Ghosts and Spectres—Shadows of History (2017); The Oceanic (2017/18); Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui: The Ground: From the Land to the Sea (2018); Trees of Life: Knowledge in Material (2018); Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz (2018); Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani: Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy (2019); The Posthuman City: Climates. Habitats. Environments (2019/20) and most recently, Non-Aligned (2020).

Bauer was Artistic Director of the 3rd berlin biennale for contemporary art, Berlin (2004) and Co-Curator of Documenta11, Kassel (2001-02) with the late Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director. Bauer has edited numerous publications in the field of contemporary art, most recently, “South East Asia. Spaces of the Curatorial” (with Brigitte Oetker), Sternberg Press (2016), “Tomas Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions” (with Anca Rujoiu) NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017), “Place.Labour.Capital” (with Anca Rujoiu) Mousse Publishing (2018) and “The Impossibility of Mapping (Urban) Asia” (with Khim Ong and Roger Nelson), World Scientific (2020). Bauer serves as a member of various advisory boards, including International Boards of Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, Bergen Assembly, Bergen and documenta commission, Kassel.