Curators

Ekaterina Degot, Director and Chief Curator
Ekaterina Degot (1958, Moscow, Russia) is an art historian, researcher, and curator focusing on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia and Eastern Europe from the 19th century to the post-Soviet era. Among other shows, she curated the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg (2010, with Cosmin Costinas and David Riff) and headed the first Bergen Assembly with Riff (2013). From 2014 to 2017, Degot was artistic director of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne. She began her five-year tenure as director and chief curator of steirischer herbst in 2018, which was extended for another five years in 2022. Degot lives in Graz.

David Riff, Senior Curator
David Riff (1975, London, UK) is a writer, translator, artist, curator, and former member of the art group Chto Delat. He has been a curator at steirischer herbst since 2018. Among other shows, Riff cocurated the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg (2010, with Cosmin Costinas and Ekaterina Degot) and headed the first Bergen Assembly together with Degot (2013). As an artist-curator, Riff is working on an ongoing long-term research and translation project about the Soviet aesthetic philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz. In 2018, this resulted in a large-scale exhibition at Garage Museum for Contemporary Art, Moscow (with Dmitry Gutov). Riff lives in Berlin.

Pieternel Vermoortel, Senior Curator
Pieternel Vermoortel (1981, Roeselare, Belgium) is a curator, writer, and editor. Since 2023, she has been a senior curator at steirischer herbst. As artistic director of Netwerk Aalst (2016–2022), she focused on decentering curatorial practices and stretching the possibilities of how cultural production can be made public, experienced, discussed, or written about. At FormContent, London, which she cofounded in 2006, she worked, among others, on a nomadic project, It’s Moving from I to It (2012–2016), taking the pulse of conversations on art writing, authorship, and subject-object relations. Vemoortel has published extensively and curated exhibitions in London, Cairo, Singapore, and other places. She has held permanent teaching positions at Goldsmiths College, London, and Curatorial Studies at KASK, Ghent. Vermoortel lives in Vienna and Graz.

Gábor Thury, Curator
Gábor Thury (1990, Budapest, Hungary) is a dramaturge and curator. He works in the field of theater and performance with a special focus on experimental performance, sociopolitical aspects of theater, and collective and participatory formats. His work as a production dramaturge has taken him to various theaters and festivals throughout Europe. Since its foundation, he has continuously collaborated with the Hungarian theater collective STEREO AKT. Between 2015 and 2017, Thury was a permanent dramaturge at Thalia Theater Hamburg, where he cofounded and was in charge of the “Embassy of Hope” Café International, an encounter space and transcultural platform. Between 2018 and 2021, he was dramaturge at the Lucerne Theater, where he was part of the programming team for theater and performance. Since 2022, Thury has been a curator at steirischer herbst and lives in Graz.

Beatrice Forchini, Assistant Curator
Beatrice Forchini (1989, Rovereto, Italy) is assistant curator at steirischer herbst. She has been working at the intersection of curatorial and educational practices within institutional contexts such as TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Belvedere, Vienna; Iuav University of Venice; the Venice Biennial, and independent art spaces. Forchini is interested in curatorial and artistic approaches that develop through a performative component and practices that address conditions in which knowledge is produced, mediated, and activated. At TBA21, she was assistant curator for the exhibitions Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation (Ocean Space, Venice, 2020–21); Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2021); Abundant Futures, and Remedios (C3A, Córdoba, 2022–23) and contributed to catalogs and publications. She lives between Graz and Vienna.

Tobias Ihl, Assistant Curator
Tobias Ihl (1990, Freising, Germany) is an assistant curator at steirischer herbst as well as an art educator and cultural manager. His curatorial approach is shaped by an extensive study of Pierre Bourdieu’s and Michel Foucault’s social theories. This includes, above all, a critical analysis of historically contingent power relations in relation to art historical canonization, the wide-ranging interpretive sovereignty of modernity, and the curatorial dispositif. Ihl has also dealt with issues such as gender discourses and cultural hybridity since the 1970s, as well as the use of urban materiality in contemporary art. Texts have been published, among others, in the collection catalogue of the Albertinum, Dresden, and in Stano Filko: A Retrospective (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2023).