The Manifesta 13 Artistic Team consists of Alya Sebti, director of Berlin’s ifa Gallery; Katerina Chuchalina, chief curator at the V-A-C Foundation in both Moscow and Venice; and Stefan Kalmár, director of the ICA in London.

Katerina Chuchalina (1975, Russia)
has been the chief curator at the V-A-C Foundation (Moscow and Venice) since 2011. Chuchalina conceived and curated the long-term cycle of nomadic artistic interventions and public programmes in Moscow non-art institutions (Museum of Armed Forces, the Museum of Modern History, Institute for African Studies, GULAG museum etc.). She curated a series of exhibitions investigating architecture-related issues by means of contemporary art, which have included the international group shows IK-00. The Spaces of Confinement (Venice, 2014), and The Way of Enthusiasts (Venice, 2014). Chuchalina co-curated a transhistorical group show Space.Force.Construction that revolved around Russian avant-garde and its resonance within contemporary artistic practices. She also conceived and co-curated Expanding Space, a public art program aimed at examining the status and modus operandi of artistic interventions in the Moscow urban environment. She is the co-founder and member of the Centre for Experimental Museology (CEM), which draws on the innovations of Soviet avant-garde museology and the history of experimental exhibition design, and focuses the museum as a medium, and political implications of cultural institutions.

Alya Sebti (1983, Morocco)
has been the director of the ifa Gallery Berlin (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) since 2016. In 2018 she was guest curator of the 13th Dak’Art, Biennial of Contemporary African Art and in 2014, she was the Artistic Director of the 5th Marrakech Biennial. She has curated several exhibitions including: invisible at Musee de l’IFAN in Dakar, Carrefour/Treffpunkt at the ifa Galleries, Casablanca, Energie Noire as part of Mons 2015 – European Capital of Culture, and Now Eat My Script at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin in 2014. She was a board member of the International Biennial Association (IBA). She has written and lectured extensively on art and the public sphere, about biennials and transcultural art practices at venues including: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Thessaloniki Biennale (Greece); University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; International Academy of Salzburg (Austria); New York University, Berlin; Le Cube Art Centre, Rabat. 

Stefan Kalmár (1970, German)
has been the director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London since 2017, where he has been widely credited with reasserting the ICA’s radical and progressive founding spirit with exhibitions by Seth Price, Forensic Architecture, Julie Becker and Metahaven and by reintroducing theatre, performance and truly independent cinema to the programme. Prior to this, Kalmár was director of Artists Space, New York, between 2009 and 2016. Notable exhibitions staged during his directorship include Danh Vō (2010), Charlotte Posenenske (2010), Bernadette Corporation (2012), Hito Steyerl (2015) and Cameron Rowland (2016). In 2012 he launched Artists Space Books & Talks, a second venue dedicated to critical, discursive practice and dialogue. With exhibitions such as Decolonize This Place, or historic surveys on the work of Christopher D’Archangolo, Charlotte Posenenske or Tom of Finland The Pleasure of Play, Kalmár demonstrates a deep commitment to historical and contemporary artists working in their most radical forms, a curatorial work that results in often longstanding and deep relationships with artists, and audiences alike. 

Marina Otero Verzier is a Spanish architect and the director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. She leads research initiatives such as “Automated Landscapes,” focusing on the emerging architectures of automated labour, “Architecture of Appropriation,” on squatting as spatial practice, and recently curated the exhibition Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective by Jonas Staal (2018). Otero was the curator of “Work, Body, Leisure,” the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale in 2018. Previously, she was Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale together with the After Belonging Agency, and director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X- Columbia University GSAPP (New York). She is a co-editor of Unmanned: Architecture and Security Series (2016), After Belonging: The Objects, Spaces, and Territories of the Ways We Stay In Transit (2016), and editor of Work, Body, Leisure (2018). Otero has authored several articles and publications, including critical texts for Palermo Atlas, the urban study’s result of Manifesta 12 in Palermo. She teaches architecture at RCA in London.

Marina Otero Verzier relinquished her position as member of the Artistic Team of Manifesta 13 Marseille as of November 2019 due to personal reasons. Marina worked extensively on the conceptualisation of the Manifesta 13 theme and its main artistic programme Traits d’union.s and several artistic projects.