Damian Christinger (*1975, Zurich) studied Global Art History and Intercultural Studies. He now works as an independent curator, writer and lectures at different institutions on transcultural theory and practice, the Anthropocene and indigenous knowledge. His main focus is on the construction of “the Other” in intercultural relations, the nature/human dichotomy in Western thought and the de-colonization of the history of ideas. He has written extensively on transcultural issues and the Anthropocene and published on such different topics as the cultural landscapes of Singapore, the reception of the Amazon in Western art or Paulo Freire and his legacy.
His museum show at the Museum Rietberg, where he was a guest curator 2014/15, featured 21 Swiss artists, who questioned the relationship between the collection of antique non-European art and its local public. He was the Co-Curator (with Dimitrina Sevova) of „New Buenos Aires“, an exhibition focusing on the challenges of a postcolonial approach towards curating in Switzerland at Corner College, Zurich. He was also the co-curator of the “Assembleia Mothertree” ,2018, in collaboration with Ernesto Neto, Fondation Beyeler, and Daniela Zyman. 2019 saw the opening of “A Ship Will Not Come”, an exhibition at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich and a longterm research and collaboration with Roger M. Buergel and Adnan Softic. In 2020 he participated as a writer in the exhibition “Tomorrow is an Island” at the ADM Gallery of the Nanyang Technological University as part of the Singapore Biennale. Since 2021 he is the curator for Habitat: A Space for Essays on the Interconnectedness Between Art and Ecologies @ Wyss Academy for Nature, Switzerland, Laos, Kenya and Peru.
