Maria Thereza Alves, born in 1961 in São Paulo, is an artist. Her works have been exhibited in dOCUMENTA (13) (2012); the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010); the 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009); Manifesta 7 (2008); the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (2008); and the 49th Venice Biennale (2001). She was a member of the International Indian Treaty Council from 1978 to 1979.

Andreas Angelidakis holds a BA in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Santa Monica, and an MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, New York. Recent solo shows include Soft Ruin, ALT Art Space, Istanbul (2016); 1:1 Period Rooms, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (2015); and Every End is a Beginning, his 2014 retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST). In 2015 he participated in the 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the 12th Baltic Triennial, Vilnius. He has recently curated and designed Fin de Siècle, Swiss Institute, New York (2014), and The System of Objects, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens (2013).

Mustapha Benfodil is an Algerian novelist and playwright. His books include Zarta ! (Barzakh, 2000); Les bavardages du seul (Barzakh, 2003); and Archéologie du chaos (amoureux) (Barzakh, 2007; Al Dante, 2012). He is also the author of many plays, among them Clandestinopolis, Les Borgnes, and End/Igné. Benfodil’s 2003 coverage of the war in Iraq was published in Les six derniers jours de Baghdad (Casbah, 2003).

María Magdalena Campos-Pons is an artist. Born in Cuba in 1959, she lives in Boston, U.S. Her works have been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2007); Indianapolis Museum of Art (2007); Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (2006); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2005); Museum of Modern Art, Salvador (2005); Dak’Art Biennale (2004); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Honcho (2003); Liverpool Biennial (1999); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1993); and Riverside Studios, London (1989).

Barbara Casavecchia is a writer and independent curator based in Milan, where she teaches at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. She is a contributing editor for frieze, and also writes for Art Agenda, Art Review, La Repubblica, Mousse, Spike, among other publications. With Andrea Zegna, she is in charge of the public art project All’aperto at Fondazione Zegna, Trivero, with permanent works by Stefano Arienti, Daniel Buren, Alberto Garutti, Dan Graham, Marcello Maloberti, Liliana Moro, and Roman Signer.

Mariana Castillo Deball is an artist who was born in Mexico City in 1975 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Her recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MACO), Oaxaca (2015); CCA, Glasgow (2013); and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2009). Group exhibitions include dOCUMENTA (13) (2012); ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale (2011); the 2nd Athens Biennial (2009); and Manifesta 7 (2008). Castillo Deball was awar­ded the Zurich Art Prize in 2012 and the Berlin Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in 2013.

Clémentine Deliss is an independent curator and fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. She studied contemporary art and anthropology in Vienna, Paris, and London. Between 2010 and 2015 she directed the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt/Main, and from 2002 to 2009 ran the interdisciplinary research lab “Future Academy” with student cells in London, Edinburgh, Dakar, Mumbai, Bangalore, Melbourne, Tokyo, and Yama­guchi. She was the publisher of the itinerant artists’ and writers’ organ Metronome (1996–2007) that was presented at documenta 10 and documenta 12.

Mahasweta Devi is a social activist and writer born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1926. Her works of fiction and activist writings translated into English include Bashai Tudu (South Asia Books, 1992); Imaginary Maps (Routledge, 1994); Dust on the Road (Seagull Books, 1997); Breast Stories (Seagull Books, 1997); The Book of the Hunter (Seagull Books, 2002); and Chotti Munda and His Arrow (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003). A selection of her short stories is also part of the anthology Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels (University of California Press, 1990).

Elsa Dorlin is a professor of political and social philosophy at the Department of Political Science and involved in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Paris 8. Her publications include La Matrice de la race: généalogie sexuelle et coloniale de la nation française (La Découverte, 2006); and Sexe, genre et sexualités (PUF, 2008). She is the editor of Black Feminism: Anthologie du féminisme africain-américain 1975–2000 (L’Harmattan, 2008), and Sexe, race, classe, pour une épistémologie de la domination (PUF, 2009).

Hendrik Folkerts is a curator of documenta 14. From 2010 to 2015 he was the curator of Performance, Film, and Discursive Programs at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and from 2009 to 2011 coordinator of the Curatorial Programme at de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam. He writes regularly for The Exhibitionist, Metropolis M, Art & the Public Sphere, Afterall Online, Tubelight, and publications of the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. He is the guest editor of The Shadowfiles #3—Curatorial Education (de Appel arts centre, 2013), and the coeditor of Facing Forward: Art and Theory from a Future Perspective (Amsterdam University Press, 2015).

Regina José Galindo was born in 1974 in Guatemala City, where she lives and works. The artist has presented her work in numerous international exhibitions, including the 49th (2001), 51st (2005), 53rd (2009), and 54th (2011) Venice Biennale; the 10th Havana Biennial (2009); the 3rd Auckland Triennial (2007); and the 2nd Prague Biennale (2005). In 2005 she received the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice Biennale in the young artist category.

Stathis Gourgouris is a professor of classics, English, and comparative literature and director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of Dream Nation (Stanford University Press, 1996); Does Literature Think? (Stanford University Press, 2003); Lessons in Secular Criticism (Fordham University Press, 2013); and editor of Freud and Fundamentalism (Fordham University Press, 2010). He has published numerous articles on ancient Greek philosophy, political theory, modern poetics, film, contemporary music, and psychoanalysis.

John Hejduk (1929–2000) was an American architect, artist, poet, and educator. He was a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, School of Architecture in New York from 1964 to 2000. His many books outlining his architectural projects through theoretical writings, sketches, and drawings, as well as poetry, include Victims (Architectural Association, 1986); Mask of Medusa (Rizzoli, 1989); Vladivostok (Rizzoli, 1989); Lancaster/Hanover Masque (Architectural Association, 1992); and Architectures in Love (Rizzoli, 1995).

Candice Hopkins is currently the chief curator at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe and has held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Western Front, Vancouver; and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff. Hopkins’s writings on history, art, and vernacular architecture have been published by MIT Press, Black Dog Publishing, Revolver, New York University Press, and the National Museum of the American Indian, among others. She has lectured widely, including a keynote pre­sentation with Hetti Perkins at dOCUMENTA (13). She is a curatorial advisor for documenta 14.

Joan Naviyuk Kane is an Inupiaq American poet based in Anchorage. Kane graduated from Harvard College and Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, and is an MFA faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe. Her published collections of poetry include The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife (University of Alaska Press, 2012); and Hyperboreal (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).

Frédéric Keck is a researcher at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the director of the Research Department of the Museé du quai Branly, Paris. After studying philosophy at the École normale supérieure, Paris, and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, he has been researching the history of anthropology and contemporary biopolitical questions. He published Claude Lévi-Strauss, une introduction (Pocket La découverte, 2005), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl: Entre philosophie et anthropologie (CNRS Éditions, 2008), and Un monde grippé (Flammarion, 2010). He has coedited Des hommes malades des animaux (L’Herne, 2012) and Sentinel Devices (Limn, 2013).

Quinn Latimer is a poet, critic, and editor-in-chief of publications for documenta 14. She is the author of Rumored Animals (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize; Sarah Lucas: Describe This Distance (Mousse Publishing, 2013); and Film as a Form of Writing: Quinn Latimer Talks to Akram Zaatari (Wiels/Motto Books, 2014). Her writings and readings have been presented widely, including at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zürich; Qalandiya International, Ramallah/Jerusalem; and the Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972) was an Argentine poet who was born to Jewish immigrant parents of Russian and Slovak descent in Buenos Aires. Her many books of poetry include The Most Foreign Country (La tierra más ajena, 1955); The Final Innocence (La última inocencia, 1956); The Lost Adventures (Las aventuras perdidas, 1958); Diana’s Tree (Árbol de Diana, 1962); Works and Nights (Los trabajos y las noches, 1965); Extracting the Stone of Madness (Extracción de la piedra de locura, 1968); A Musical Hell (El infierno musical, 1971); and The Bloody Countess (La condesa sangrienta, 1971).

Jolene Rickard is a visual historian, artist, and curator interested in the issues of indigeneity within a global context. She is the associate professor and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University. She is currently a recipient of a Ford Foundation Research Grant and is conducting research in the Americas, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia culminating in a new journal on indigenous aesthetics.

Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet and politician. From 1960 to 1980 he was the president of Senegal. He was the first African elected to the Académie française and received many accolades for his literary work, among them the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1968. His books of poetry include Chants d’ombre (Shadow Songs, 1945); Hosties noires (Black Hosts, 1948); Ethiopiques (1956); and Nocturnes (1961).

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in 1942 in Kolkata, India. She is a professor and founding member of the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, New York. Her writings include In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Routledge, 1987); The Post-Colonial Critic (Routledge, 1990); A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Harvard University Press, 1999); Death of a Discipline (Columbia University Press, 2003); and Other Asias (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).

Subcomandante Marcos was the pseudonym used by the main ideologist and spokesman of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a Mexican rebel movement fighting for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Considered by the Zapatistas to have become too much of a distraction from the political goals of the movement due to his popularity, the figure announced his last public appearance in late May 2014. Since then he has taken up the new identity of Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.

Adam Szymczyk is the artistic director of documenta 14. He was the director and chief curator of Kunsthalle Basel from 2003 to 2014, and co-curator of the 5th Berlin Biennale in 2008. He was a founder of Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, and in 2011 he was the recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement from the Menil Foundation.