The Curatorial Roundtable, an international forum for curators and institutional leaders to discuss formative and current projects, is hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, Founding Chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
João Laia is Artistic Director of the Department of Contemporary Art of the Municipality of Porto. Previously, he was the chief curator for exhibitions at Kiasma, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland. In 2021, together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, he curated the 14th edition of the Baltic Triennial at the CAC, Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius. Other Recent include Masks (2020) and 10000 Years Later Between Venus and Mars (2017-18), Oporto City Hall Gallery; In Free Fall (2019), CaixaForum, Barcelona; Vanishing Point (2019), Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon; Drowning in a sea of Data (2019) and Transmissions from the Etherspace (2017), La Casa Encendida, Madrid; foreign bodies (2018), P420, Bologna; H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D (2016), MMOMA – Moscow Museum of Modern Art; and Hybridize or Disappear (2015), MNAC, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. Laia also co-curated the 19th and 20th editions of Videobrasil (2014–18) in São Paulo. Other exhibitions, performance programs, and screenings have been held at Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Xcèntric / CCCB (Barcelona), Videoex (Zürich), Calouste Gulben, Kurzfilmtage – International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Cell Project Space, DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation), Delfina Foundation, South London Gallery, and Whitechapel Gallery (all in London). In 2012-13, he attended the post-graduate research program CuratorLab at Konstfack, Stockhom and in 2014 was part of the curatorial residency of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. He edited A Multiple Community (São Paul: SESC publishing, 2018), co-edited Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s monograph Spiral Forest (Milano: Mousse, 2018), and has published articles in Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike, and Terremoto.