Director
Mai Abu ElDahab

Raised and educated in Cairo, Mai Abu ElDahab is a contemporary art curator living in Brussels since 2007. Her curatorial projects have been concerned with “how we work” as much as with the “what we do”. Before joining as director of Mophradat in fall 2014, she was most recently co-curator of the 8^th Liverpool Biennial, and from 2007 to 2012, she was director of Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp. She has edited and co-edited many publications including These are the tools of the present (2017), Final Vocabulary (2016), Circular Facts (2011), The Agreement by Hassan Khan (2011), amongst others, all from Sternberg Press. She also commissioned two records, Both Sides of the Curtain by The Dwarfs of East Agouza (with Unrock, 2017) and Behave Like an Audience by Concert (with Sternberg Press, 2013).

Administration and Production Coordinator
Alberto García del Castillo

Alberto García del Castillo is a Spanish arts curator and administrator, actor, playwright, and writer. Since 2014, he runs the Brussels-based arts initiative Buenos Tiempos, Int. with Marnie Slater. He has recently scripted and performed the words of Esther Newton, Ocaña, and Luis Zapata, this last one in collaboration with Mexican scholar Susana Vargas Cervantes. He has published two books Merman (2017) and Retrospective (2014) both with Shelter Press and has also written for publications like Girls Like Us magazine.

Grants Coordinator
Krystel Khoury

Born in Beirut, Krystel Khoury has since 2006 been working as a cultural consultant and coordinator for organizations in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, France, and Germany, for which she coordinates and implements projects engaging artists from the Arab world and Europe. Trained originally as a dancer, Khoury holds a Masters in Performing Arts from Université de Lyon and earned a Ph.D. in anthropology of dance and intercultural dynamics from Auvergne Université in 2014. Her research focuses on embodied knowledge and political discourses, dance education, artistic processes, and anthropological theories. Her latest contributions include Theatre Against Borders (Arts Mdpi, 2018) and Dancing In The Waiting Room (ASA 18, Oxford University). She is also the editor of Lullabies from the Worlds of Islam (Al Ayn museum, 2018) and com(.)com (2019). Since 2019, she is the head professor of ISAC, Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, in Brussels.

Communication Coordinator
Doreen Toutikian

Doreen Toutikian joined the Mophradat team in 2020. She is a cultural producer with a background in human-centered design. She is founder of Beirut Design Week & MENA Design Research Center. She has worked as a consultant with UNRWA (Palestinian refugee camps) and IOM-Kurdistan (Creative & Cultural Industries development). She lectures MA students on design research at Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, where she is also a member of the pedagogical committee. In 2018, she co-founded LOOP/Listen Observe Organize Prototype/ in Greece to support cultural dialogue. In 2019 with a granted fellowship from Mophradat, she initiated the Arab Feminist Films program in Athens. She holds a BA in Communication Design from Notre Dame University Lebanon, and an MA in Design Research from Koeln International School of Design. She speaks six languages and volunteers at Khora as an interpreter for Arabic speaking asylum seekers in Greece. 

Accountancy
Art Consult

Translation
Ziad Chakaroun

Graphic identity
Julie Peeters

Web design and development
Arthur Haegeman

Additional design and Arabic typesetting
Valerie Arif

Former team members are Amal Khalaf, Carl Cappelle, Jenifer Evans, Lauren Wetmore, Marie-Nour Héchaimé, and Nadia Cherif.

Hammad Nasar is a curator and writer. He is senior research fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre (Yale University), where he co-leads the London, Asia project. He is also senior research fellow at University of the Arts, London. He co-founded the London-based arts organization Green Cardamom (2004-12), and was head of research and programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2012-16). Nasar will be executive director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London from June 2018.

Sophie Nys is a Belgian artist whose work brings together sculpture, drawing, photography, and video to examine themes such as history, philosophy, and architecture with a wry sense of humor and play. Exhibitions include solo shows at CRAC Alsace in Altkirch in 2015, Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels in 2014, La Loge in Brussels in 2013, and Circuit in Lausanne and Projecte SD in Barcelona in 2012. Nys’ work has been included in group exhibitions at Swiss Art Awards in Basel, Haus Konstruktiv in Zürich and Artists Space in New York.

Suzanne Cotter is director of Mudam Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne du Grand-Duc Jean. Cotter studied art history at the University of Melbourne, the École du Louvre, Paris, and the Courtauld Institute, London. Between 2013 and 2017, she served as artistic director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea – Fundaçao de Serralves, and between 2010 and 2012 as curator for the Abu Dhabi Project at Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Cotter was senior curator and deputy director at Modern Art Oxford from 2002 to 2009, and from 1998 to 2002, she was exhibition curator at the Hayward Gallery, London. She was, with Rasha Salti, curator of the 10th Sharjah Biennial in 2011.

Walid Raad (board president) is an artist and an associate professor of art at Cooper Union, New York. Raad’s works to date consist of mixed-media installations, performance, video, photography, and literary essays. Recent works include The Atlas Group, a fifteen-year project starting in 1989 about Lebanon’s contemporary history, with emphasis on the wars of 1975 to 1991. Raad’s works have been shown at documenta 11 (Kassel), Venice Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Homeworks (Beirut), among other international venues. He is a member of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut/New York).

Carin Kuoni is director/chief curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, where she also teaches. From 1998 to 2003, she was director of exhibitions at Independent Curators International (ICI), and from 1992 to 1997 director of the Swiss Institute, New York City. A founding member of the artists’ collective REPOhistory, Kuoni has curated numerous transdisciplinary exhibitions and edited several publications. She has been a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship, directed SITAC XII: Arte, justamente in Mexico City in 2015, and is a Travel Companion for the 57th Carnegie International.

Helena Kritis is a freelance curator and film programmer. She is a member of the short film selection committee for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Between 2008 and 2019 she was in charge of the visual and audiovisual arts program of Beursschouwburg. She is a board member of Courtisane Festival in Ghent, the cinephile online reflection platform sabzian.be in Belgium, and the Brussels-based artist run production and distribution platform Elephy. She has a seat in the funding committee for visual arts of the Flemish Government of Belgium and she recently joined the acquisition committee for the collection of the Flemish Parliament of Belgium.

Having completed a master’s degree in drama at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema & Sound (RITCS) in Brussels, Hendrik De Smedt developed his professional career as a freelance actor, theatre-maker and production manager in the international field of performing arts. In 2009, he started A Two Dogs Company, the structure supporting the artist Kris Verdonck. He was for five years the managing director and production manager of the company. In 2015 he became director (ad-interim) of Het Theater Festival Vlaanderen, the annual Flemish festival of performing arts. In June 2016 he graduated from the Vlerick Business School in Gent with an Executive MBA. At the moment, he is director of the Drama Department at the RITCS.

Jananne Al-Ani is a London-based Iraqi-born artist. She studied fine art at the Byam Shaw School of Art and graduated with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, both in London. She is currently a senior research fellow at the University of the Arts London. Exhibiting widely both nationally and internationally, her recent work explores the impact of photography, flight, and the technologies of modern warfare on the representation of contested landscapes.

Matthias Lilienthal has been the director of the theater company Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich since the 2015/16 season. He was head dramaturg at the Volksbühne Berlin from 1992 to 1999. In 2002 he was program director for the festival Theater der Welt in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Duisburg, and then again in 2014 in Mannheim. From 2003 to 2012 he was artistic director and manager of the theater and performance space HAU in Berlin, and from September 2012, Lilienthal lectured as resident professor for 10 months at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut.

Reem Fadda is an independent curator and art historian. From 2010 to 2016, Fadda was associate curator of Middle Eastern art at the Abu Dhabi Project at Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From 2005 to 2007, she was director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA) and academic director for the International Academy of Art Palestine, which she helped found in 2006. She has curated exhibitions such as Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al Quds) at the Palestinian Museum (2017), Not New Now, the 6th Marrakech Biennale (2016), and the UAE Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Fadda was awarded the 8th Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2017.

Former members of the organization are Adila Laidi-Hanieh, Khalil Benkirane, Mai Abu ElDahab, Maryem El Haik, Nawel Skandrani, Pierre Abi-Saab, Rachida Ait-Ali, Res Bosshart, Tarek Abou El Fetouh, Trudi Maan, Vasif Kortun, and Willy Smith.