The Shanghai Biennale has appointed Cuauhtémoc Medina, the chief curator of Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporanea in Mexico City, as curator of its 2018 edition. Alongside the announcement came news of two other appointments: Shi Hanato will be the biennial’s chief coordinator, and He Huanhuan will be its head of administrative affairs.

Medina curated the ninth edition of Manifesta, in 2012, and Teresa Margolles’s Mexican Pavilion for the 2009 Venice Biennale, and has been an associate curator of Latin American art at Tate Modern. He is currently a full-time researcher and lecturer at Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and is recipient of the Menil Collection’s Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement

In a statement, Medina said, “Biennales are large-scale exhibitions that, beyond offering a certain perspective on the potential of art and culture today, inscribe a city and an event as a provisory and symbolic artistic world center. That Shanghai hosts an exhibition of that kind is most appropriate for it provides a clear image of the current decentering of our cultural narratives and the significance that China and Asia have in the cultural and economic circuits of today.”