Devrim Bayar takes you through Willem Oorebeek’s exhibition OBSTAKLES.
Devrim Bayar is Senior Curator at KANAL-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. She has collaborated with Willem Oorebeek on numerous occasions. Not only at WIELS, where they worked together as part of the artist residency programme but also more recently at the Geneva Biennale, where Oorebeek was one of the invited artists. Bayar and Oorebeek have also produced an artist's edition to accompany the publication The Anthology of Le Salon (Triangle Books, 2019), which is now part of the KANAL collection.
Photo credit: Stephanie De Smet
BIO
Devrim Bayar is Senior Curator at KANAL-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. Previously she was curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, where she worked on the exhibitions of Wolfgang Tillmans, R.H. Quaytman, Jacqueline de Jong, Huguette Caland, René Daniëls, Sammy Baloji, Pierre Leguillon, Thomas Bayrle, Daan van Golden, Helena Almeida, among other artists, as well as group shows, such as Something Stronger Than Me* conceived together with Willem Oorebeek and Rita McBride, exploring recent developments in collaborative art practices. Bayar also co-curated a series of exhibitions Un-Scene featuring emerging artists working in Belgium. Her independent curatorial projects include the Geneva Biennale — Sculpture Garden (2022) and Poésie contre fin du monde conceived with French artist Ethan Assouline as a sort of experimental community library in Montpellier (2024). Bayar is an author and editor of numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, with forthcoming essays on Walter Pfeiffer (Swiss Institute/Pacific, 2025) and Mimosa Echard (Mousse Publishing, 2025). Devrim Bayar recently initiated the Brussels Ass Book Fair, an independent book fair featuring productions from LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as a music programme dedicated to sound productions by multidisciplinary artists broadcasted on a community radio Kiosk.