Mirela Baciak appointed director

The board of Salzburger Kunstverein is pleased to announce that Mirela Baciak will be the next director of the institution. She will take up the position in July 2023 for a five-year term with a possible extension. Baciak comes to Salzburger Kunstverein from steirischer herbst festival, where since 2019 she has served as curator for visual art and performance.

“We are delighted to have appointed Mirela Baciak,” says Gerda Ridler, the board’s president, “a young and engaged curator whose curatorial and research practice is concerned with questions of inclusion and access, as well as a commitment to building sustainable relationships with diverse communities and publics.”

About her appointment, Mirela Baciak comments: “I am honored to take over the directorship of Salzburger Kunstverein. The vision I have developed for Salzburger Kunstverein is that of a dynamic, responsive institution that reflects societal challenges in the continuously changing world, and considers and expands contemporary art discourses. I am interested in far-reaching artistic and curatorial projects that consider sustainability and are driven by the values of sharing and learning. I am grateful for this responsibility and look forward to working with the board, new colleagues at Salzburger Kunstverein, artists and researchers on the implementation of my programs, as well as local and international partners.”

Mirela Baciak (b. 1987, Warsaw) is a curator in the field of visual arts whose practice is guided by the notion of hospitality as a process which captures one’s ethical relation to the unknown and the strange.

Since 2019, she has served as curator at steirischer herbst festival in Graz, where she has been developing new artistic commissions and performance formats for the festival’s various editions. Last year, she and David Riff also curated the special exhibition A War in the Distance. Prologue. An Embattled Ukraine in Video Art and Film. Before joining steirischer herbst, Baciak worked at Public Art Munich 2018, a perennial that investigated ways in which art can exist in the public realm through newly commissioned performances and interventions.

Baciak was a fellow or curator-in-residence at the EDI Global Forum for Education and Integration by Fondazione Morra Greco (2022), ARAC Bucharest (2022), Shanghai Curators Lab II (2019), HOW Art Museum Shanghai (2019), Dhaka Art Summit (2018), CCA Warsaw (2018), kültüř gemma and Kunsthalle Wien (2017), and the 7th Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course (2016).

On a freelance basis Baciak has also curated and co-curated exhibitions, most recently Suspension of Disbelief (2023) at TANK Shanghai, Something Soft, Something Strange, Something Scary (2023) at PGS Sopot, the screening program Surface Tension (2022) at Blickle Kino, Belvedere21, and Nature \ nature (2019) at Kunstraum Niederösterreich, and as associated researcher has contributed to the art-based research project Mythopoesis for Techno-Living Systems (2021–ongoing).

Baciak holds an MA in Critical Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she was also a guest lecturer (2022) and an exhibition-committee member (2020–2021). In 2023, she initiated the AAC | Austrian Association of Curators, an organization that fosters curatorial-knowledge production, where she continues serving as a board member.

Mirela Baciak succeeds Séamus Kealy, who recently took on his new role as executive director of Oakville Galleries. Baciak’s program at Salzburger Kunstverein will begin in 2024. Through 2023, she remains involved in part with steirischer herbst, completing projects she has been developing for the festival.

About Salzburger Kunstverein
Salzburger Kunstverein, founded in 1844, is one of Austria’s oldest and most prestigious art associations for contemporary art. Based in Salzburg, it is supported by over 500 members and is housed in the city’s historic Künstlerhaus, which includes exhibition spaces of approximately 500 m2 and 22 studios used by artists and art initiatives. Salzburger Kunstverein facilitates exhibitions and projects by artists that shape today’s art discourse and creates access for a range of audiences to art and its debates.

Media contact: Michaela Lederer, T +43 (0) 662 842294-15 / lederer@salzburger-kunstverein.at