Defne Ayas shares with us the connections between the goddess culture and our contemporary lived experience and what it is that we share with our ancestors. The talk promises to be a visual compendium from a variety of contexts, encompassing both Eastern and Western references, with a special focus on Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and draws upon art, mythology, and spirituality.
This talk was recorded by Isilay Yanbas.
Defne Ayas is the Director and Curator of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam.
Defne has also been a curator/programmer of PERFORMA and has managed the biennial’s collaborative partnerships with a consortium of eighty+ cultural institutions across New York City and organized acclaimed projects and programs with an international roster of artists, architects, curators, and writers. She remains a curator-at- large at Performa. Defne also worked as a director of programs of the collaborative curatorial platform Arthub Asia in Shanghai for five years and as an art history instructor at New York University in Shanghai. In September 2012, she co-curated the 11th Baltic Triennale (with Benjamin Cook, LUX) to great acclaim as well as the Istanbul city pavilion of the 9th Shanghai Biennale’s. Defne Ayas received her Masters degree from ITP – Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and her BA in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia.