CCS BARD

Nicola Lees is the Director and Curator of 80WSE a non-profit exhibition space for contemporary art located in Washington Square, under the pedagogical wing of its parent organization, New York University. 80WSE supports flexible, long-term engagements with artists, with a programmatic focus on intergenerational exchange, and artists whose complex practices have stood outside dominant narratives around contemporary art. Recent exhibitions include, Duane Linklater, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lutz Bacher, Damien Davis, Diamond Stingily, Queer Thoughts, John Giorno, Harun Farocki, Peter Gidal, Patricia L. Boyd and this past winter Lees worked with Pablo León de la Barra on a group exhibition tackling the history of the Nicaraguan Revolution through an examination of the artist’s colony of Solentiname. In New York 80WSE partners with CCS Bard, Swiss Institute, Performance Space NY, Anthology Film Archives and recently toured Dream of Solentiname to Museo Jumex in Mexico City. From 2012-2015 Lees was the Curator for Frieze Projects; leading the annual not-for-profit program featuring artist commissions, film, and music at Frieze London. In 2015, Lees was also curator of the 60th anniversary edition of the Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Lees was previously Senior Curator at the Serpentine Gallery (London), where she oversaw interdisciplinary, time-based and performance projects and artist commissions as well as Park Nights, initiating the Serpentine Cinema series, and the Serpentine Gallery Marathon (co-curated with Hans Ulrich Obrist) from 2008-2012. Lees has also curated exhibitions at Malmö Konsthall in 2015 as well as Left Pop Bringing it Home at the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2007. At the Irish Museum of Modern Art she worked on key solo exhibitions by Alex Katz, Miroslaw Balka, Georgia O’Keeffe, Nalini Malani, and a group exhibition curated with Philippe Parreno. Over the last ten years Lees has edited and produced a number of catalogues and artist books. Lutz Bacher’s forthcoming publication launches September 2018. Nicola Lees (b. London) lives and works in New York.