Markus Schinwald represents Austria at the 54th Biennale di Venezia. In the framework of Bice Curiger’s general theme ILLUMInations, he negotiates the representation and manipulation of space, time, light, and shadow. He not only alters our experience of space through a moment of disturbance, but also allows the pavilion’s architecture and history to stand and makes it his subject—with all its ruptures, rifts, and blemishes.

Jacqueline Burckhardt is an art historian and art critic. She studied restoration at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome and art history, archaeology, and non-European art at the University of Zurich. Since co-founding the magazine Parkett in 1984, which is published in direct collaboration with the artists whose oeuvre is explored in in-depth essays by outstanding writers and critics, Jacqueline Burckhardt has been a member of its editorial staff. Since 2006, she has served as a consultant to Novartis and curated site-specific projects on the Novartis Campus in Basel. In 2008, she was appointed director of the summer academy of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

Born in Bonn, Dr. Yilmaz Dziewior studied art history and archaeology in Bonn and London. He graduated in Berlin with a doctoral thesis on Mies van der Rohe. He is an art historian, curator, and critic whose texts have been published regularly in Artforum, Camera Austria, and Texte zur Kunst. From 2001 to 2008 he served as director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg, also teaching art theory at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) from 2003 to 2009. Yilmaz Dziewior has been a member of the acquisition committee for the Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany since 2007 and director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz since October 2009.

After studying art history and archaeology in Vienna, Paris, and London, Ursula Krinzinger opened her first gallery in Bregenz in 1971. The gallery in Innsbruck was founded in 1972, the gallery in Vienna in 1986. Since 2002, the experimental exhibition space Krinzinger Projects has been complementing the activities of Galerie Krinzinger. Ursula Krinzinger has drawn international acclaim with her presentations on Viennese Actionism and numerous group exhibitions curated by her, e.g. Zur Situation und Kreativität der Frau (1975), Zur Definition eines neuen Kunstbegriffs (1979), Neue Strategien NYC I (1986), Manierismus subjektiv (1987), Fluxus subjektiv (1990), LAX (1992), UK Maximum Diversity (1998), Berlin Binnendifferenz (2000), post_modellismus (2005), curated by_ (2009–2011). Since 2002, the committed gallery owner has organized the Krinzinger Residencies with studios in Austria, Hungary, and Sri Lanka.

Hedwig Fijen is Director of Manifesta, which includes the Manifesta, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Manifesta Journal, Manifesta archive and other related projects. She is based both in the Manifesta host cities and the Manifesta foundation in Amsterdam, where the permanent organization is installed. Hedwig Fijen is working for Manifesta since 1993. She is trained as a historian and art historian and has worked in the eighties on artistic projects both in former Soviet Union and Cuba.

Having served as the Swiss ambassador to China in the mid to late 1990s, Uli Sigg is the largest collector of Chinese contemporary art. Such is his involvement in the country's art scene that he has become known as "Chinese contemporary art's ambassador to the World." Sigg sits on the board of several multinational companies, and in 1997 he established the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) for artists living and working in the country. Its companion, the CCAA Art Critic Award, was founded in 2007. Sigg is a member of MoMA's International Council and Tate's International Advisory Council.

Alanna Heiss is the founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and current Director of AIR Art International Radio, an Internet-based radio station operating out of the legendary Clocktower Gallery. As a leader of the early 1970’s alternative space movement, Heiss organized over 700 exhibitions both at P.S.1 and in art venues around the world. She was Commissioner of the 1985 Paris Biennial, and of the American Pavilion at the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Jörg Heiser is co-editor of the international art magazine Frieze. In addition he is currently a guest professor at Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria, and writes for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Heiser has curated various international exhibitions including Romantic Conceptualism at the BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, in 2007, while his recent publications include Contextualize (2003) and All of a Sudden: Things That Matter in Contemporary Art (2007).