The Turkish-born curator Fatoş Üstek has been appointed as the new director of the Liverpool Biennial, replacing Sally Tallant who was named president and executive director of Queens Museum in New York last November.
Üstek will take the reins in May, and will begin planning the 11th edition of the biennial which is due to launch next year. “In my new role, I will be taking Liverpool as my point of reference, while reflecting on current global discourses and developments in the international arena,” she says in a statement.
Üstek was appointed the director and chief curator of the David Roberts Art Foundation in London last March. She was the curator of Art Night in 2017, an annual festival of live commissions spread across east London and was associate curator of the tenth Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in 2014.
Üstek also curated Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s replica of a Korean house and surrounding bamboo garden (Bridging Home, London)—installed on a footbridge at Wormwood Street in central London—which will remain in situ until early 2020. The non-profit organisations Art Night and Sculpture in the City brought the work to London.
Tallant was appointed the director of the Liverpool Biennial in 2011, and oversaw four editions.