Neville Wakefield

Neville Wakefield is a postmodern writer and curator interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. As senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and curator of Frieze Projects, he gained a reputation for challenging the conditions that shape art in both commercial and noncommercial contexts. Explorations of time and space have been a signature part of his practice. He has worked extensively with international institutions, including the Schaulager in Switzerland, where he curated the Matthew Barney retrospective Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail one of the first shows to juxtapose the work of a contemporary artist with that of half a millennium before. Space as it relates to landscape and land art led him to co-found Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, while also shaping the recurring Desert X exhibitions in the Coachella Valley region of Southern California of which he is Founding Artistic Director. He has also been instrumental in the development and success of Desert X AlUla, taking place in AlUla northwest Saudi Arabia, home to the country’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra along with numerous other initiatives aimed at promoting art in the Gulf region.