About the team

○ Lara Khaldi (Artistic Director) is the Artistic Director of de Appel, she is also an alumna of its curatorial programme, 2013/2014. She was a member of the curatorial team of documenta 15, 2020-2023. She taught at and was the head of the Media Studies Programme at Alquds Bard College, Jerusalem, 2018 - 2020 and a tutor in the Disarming Design MA program, at Sandberg Institute, 2020-2022. Lara curated numerous exhibitions, some are; The Sharjah Biennial offsite project Shifting Grounds, Ramallah in 2017; A Sequence of Events in the Lives of the Dorment, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, 2020. She has edited and contributed to many publications, among them In aching agony and longing I wait for you at the Spring of Thieves: Jumana Emil Abboud (Black Dog Press, 2018).

○ Sofia Patat (Business Director) took on the position of Business Director of de Appel in January 2023. Previously, she worked as Account Manager Foundations at the Stedelijk Museum where she was also a member of the Workers Council. Over the last 15 years she has worked in the international visual arts sector, amongst others at the Rijksakademie where she was responsible for International Developments and Partnerships, the Tropenmuseum (now Wereldmuseum) and the Manifesta Biennial as Head of the Grants Department.

○ Nell Donkers (Curator Archive) is the custodian the Archive (library, archive and collection) of de Appel in Amsterdam since 2002 and made it digitally and physically accessible. The archive represents the memory of De Appel and has become a knowledge- and meeting place for researchers, artists and art lovers, wherein Donkers plays a connecting role. In different set-ups Donkers initiates and organizes presentations and events with and about the rich history of De Appel using ephemera and digitized audio and video. In addition, she invites contemporary artists who work with themes like archiving, bookmaking, systemising and use the tactic of "story in storytelling.” to publish The Remote Archivist.

○ Lucie von Eugen (Head of Production) works in the art field as a producer and maker. She works with artists, makers, thinkers and children and is interested in the process of collaborating and supporting artists/makers in ways of creating works and spaces together. Lucie spends her time between de Appel and working on her ceramics in her studio in Amsterdam. Lucie studied fine arts at the Hogeschool van de Kunsten in Utrecht, after she started working in the art field as a maker and producer. Lucie loves to spend her time with her hands in the clay and reading books that were written in confusing times. She loves to laugh and learned to cry recently.

○ Jan-Pieter 't Hart (Head fo Communication) is an art worker based in Amsterdam, working mostly in the fields of writing, sound, publishing and organizing. He graduated from Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in 2022. He is part of a publishing platform called OUTLINE and a music community called corecore. The projects he is involved in tend to be conversational and relational, with an insistence on proximity, accessibility, playfulness and unoriginality.

○ Ka-Tjun Hau (Curator Embedded Art) is a curator and cultural practitioner based in Amsterdam. Within his practice, Ka-Tjun is interested in the dynamics that shape collective consciousness, exploring the hidden threads that connect us to places, people, and stories.

○ Brechje Krah (Exhibition Host) is a synesthetic writer with a fascination for time and its passing.

○ Maria Nolla (Coordinator Curatorial Programme and Curatorial Assistant) is an artist and cultural worker. She graduated with an MFA in 2019, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and in 2020 she obtained her MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture from the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. Her art practice brings together organic material that has scatological and abject presence in the sanitized urban and exhibition context. Through her sculptures and installations, she tries to create situations that present themselves as witnesses of time and organic processes, that certain systems won’t allow us to experience. During the last years Maria participated in exhibitions and talks in institutional spaces such as CentroCentro in Madrid or Industra in Brno; in commercial galleries such as Diez in Amsterdam and in artist-run spaces such as Digestivo in Rotterdam or Tilde in Amsterdam. Her work at de Appel encompasses participating in curating projects and exhibitions as well as organizing around the Curatorial Programme.

○ Ilia Pelapaisiotou (Curatorial Programme Intern) is born in Cyprus and graduated from King’s College London (KCL), having studied History and European culture (French) with a year abroad. She is currently an intern at de Appel, assisting Maria Nolla on the Curatorial Programme. Having been raised in an artistic household, Ilia has grown to be passionate about the Arts; a trajectory that she wants to pursue herself. She is particularly interested in literature, film, video making, sketching and graphic design. She holds a particular love for non-western music.

○ Sophie Soobramanien (Public Programme Producer) is an artist and producer working in Amsterdam across video, installation, writing and research. She loves working with others, currently she collaborates with Shreya de Souza on a study model called Bread Buffet. Through workshops, zines, reading groups and experimental performances, they collage and interweave theory, art, fiction, contemporary events and visual material. Trying to find ways to contextualize and present swathes of research and information that bypass potential barriers of academia. Sophie is led by a desire to learn from those around her and reimagine personal and collective subjectivities that are corroded by imperial, hyper-capitalist, and white supremacist logics. In doing so, exposing these racial and colonial technologies to processes of change, negotiation and refusal.

○ Kleoniki Stanich (Exhibition Host) is a visual artist and filmmaker located in Amsterdam, NL. Her artistic practice focuses around video-making as it navigates narratives of emerging, grief and desire. Within this context, she is especially interested in inherited and intergenerational dialogues as well as systems of (non) communication and the performance-politics embodied in social behaviour. Kleoniki touches upon grief not only in regards to death in its most literal sense, but also, the kind that emerges from peripheral hierarchies, caretaking systems and more. Eventually, she turns to the filmic space as an outlet for vocality and attentiveness.