Born and educated in Barcelona, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané now lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He is part of the generation of artists that began their production at the beginning of this century. The artists’ varied techniques and media include film, sound, drawing, kaleidoscopic collages, photography, sculpture and gardens. Nature is a constant in his work, which explores the contamination and affinity of forms that exist between nature, art and architecture. Concerned with the global ecological crisis, he believes that any change in the natural environment also modifies our own nature. Both in his sculptures, which are extremely fragile and incorporate altered organic material, and in his filmic work, the artist experiments with the correspondences between organic and geometric forms, and with the complex network of dependencies between natural order and the order created by human beings.

Solo exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Münster (2020), Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2019), Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (2019), Nottingham Contemporary (2019), CCS Bard College, New York State (2018), Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2018), Fundaçaô Serralves, Porto (2017), Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín (2016) and Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2015). He has participated in biennials and triennials in Lyon, Berlin, New York, Paris, Porto Alegre and São Paulo, among others. His work is included in the collections of Tate Modern, London; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Museu Serralves, Porto; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Castilla y León; Fundació “la Caixa” and MACBA, Barcelona.

Hiuwai Chu is Head of Exhibitions and Curator at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, where she has worked since 2007 as assistant curator and curator. She has curated exhibitions such as Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations (2023); Panorama 21: Notes for an Eyer Fire (2021), Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress(2019), Undefined Territories: Perspectives on Colonial Legacies (2019), and Akram Zaatari. Against Photography: An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation (2017). She is co-editor of the book Climate: Our Right to Breath (K. Verlag, 2022). She is on the board of Hangar, an artist residency and center for research and production, and of Cordova, an independent curatorial project, both based in Barcelona. She was a member of the Editorial board of L’Internationale Online from 2021 – 2023. Before moving to Barcelona, Chu previously worked as associate editor at Aperture, New York. She studied anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

João Laia is the chief curator for exhibitions at Kiasma National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, and curator of forms of the surrounding futures, the 12th edition of GIBCA – Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2023). He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. Past projects were developed in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Galeria Municipal do Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; MAAT – Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Moscow Young Art Biennial, MMOMA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo. He edited Living Encounters (Kiasma/Mousse, 2022) and A Multiple Community (Sesc, 2018) and has been published in magazines such as ArtMonthly, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike and Terremoto. Together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia curated the 14th Baltic Triennial (2021) titled The Endless Frontier at the CAC – Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, and in 2024 Klimašauskas and Laia curate the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennial showcasing the artist duo Pakui Hardware