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 managing director of de Appel in January 2023. Previously, Patat 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.

○ Marina Christodoulidou (Curatorial Research Fellow) is a researcher and curator based between Amsterdam and Nicosia. Traversing curatorial formats, her work emerges from socially engaged and self-organized practices, often taking the form of discursive exhibitions, writing, film, and architecture. She is currently a curatorial research fellow at de Appel, focusing on questions around land, housing, and self-governance. As part of her research, she co-curated a contribution to the Jakarta Biennial 2024, collaborating with Palestinian and Indonesian collectives and artists for Our People are Our Mountains: Instructions for Placemaking. Marina also tutors at de Appel’s COOP study program Assembling Land at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), co-led with artist Noor Abuarafeh (2023–25). Previously, she worked with the Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (2015–19) and co-curated the Anachoresis project, which represented Cyprus at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021). Through her participation in de Appel’s Curatorial Programme 2023, together with her peers, she explored tools and tactics for collective curatorial practice, initiating the trans-local, process-based project Hope is a Discipline. Among other collaborative projects, Marina co-directed The Broken Pitcher (2020–ongoing) with Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Peter Eramian, tracing the colonial history of finance, debt, and property, while responding to its findings through solidarity forums and grassroots actions.

○ Francesca D'Errico (Communications and Production Intern) is an Amsterdam-based writer and researcher born in Italy. Following her degree in Literary and Cultural Analysis, she is interested in theory and different methodologies of writing. Her practice revolves around creating texts that encounter questions of form, translation, and critique.

○ 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.

○ Phylicia Gilijamse (Curator Embedded Art) lives with her adopted cat Ray in the Spaarndammer neighborhood in Amsterdam. She also works at Huis Marseille (as a coordinator), in addition to de Appel. She is a maker who enjoys building all kinds of things. She works freelance in teams of exhibition builders and when there is time left she makes free work in a mini studio in her partner's shed in Betondorp. In her free time, she can be found on dance floors and cinemas. She likes to travel (by train) around Europe to visit friends she has made in the 11 years she has lived outside the Netherlands.

○ 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 (Exhibition Host) is a British-Mauritian artist working in Amsterdam across video, installation, performance, and writing. She is led by a desire to reimagine a personal and collective subjectivity that has been corroded, and corrode the technologies that made it so. Tools/tactics used but not limited to; citing, collaborating, relational, changing form, playing near, negotiating/resisting/& honouring those who refuse, getting inside and pushing outwards and rubbing up against, conversationsss.

○ 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.