ISTANBUL.- Jan Boelen has been appointed as the curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, to be held from 22 September to 4 November 2018 by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV).

Jan Boelen (b. 1967, Genk, Belgium) is artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, and artistic director of atelier LUMA, an experimental laboratory for design in Arles, France. He also holds the position of the head of the Master department Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Since the opening, Z33 House for Contemporary Art has been fashioning projects and exhibitions that encourage the visitor to look at everyday objects in a novel manner. It is a unique laboratory for experiment and innovation and a meeting place with cutting-edge exhibitions of contemporary art and design. With Z33 Research, design and art research studios established in 2013, Boelen is transforming Z33 from exhibition-based to a research-based institution. At the initiative of Z33 and the Province of Limburg, Manifesta 9 took place in Belgium in 2012. As part of his role at Z33, Boelen curated the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2014.

Boelen also serves on various boards and committees including the advisory board of the V&A Museum of Design Dundee in the UK and Creative Industries Fund in the Netherlands. Boelen holds a degree in product design from the Media and Design Academy (now the LUCA School of Arts) in Genk, Belgium.

The Istanbul Design Biennial, taking place since 2012, aims to bring together a diverse cross section of design ideas, exploring a wide range of fields concerning design. Seeding ideas and fostering dialogue and intersections within the creative and academic community, the biennial operates on a network of national and international collaborations with cultural agents, institutions, universities and companies. Using the city as a dynamic space for projects, actions and interventions the biennial tackles global design problems by discussing the notion of design, stimulating critical debate, foregrounding underexplored or overlooked aspects of society and prompting further investigation into and exchange about emerging conditions of our world. Committed to design as a tool for understanding the complex role of design in today’s society the biennial as a progressive discussion platform is in permanent transformation.