AA Bronson is an artist living and working in Toronto and Berlin. Since his partners died in 1994, AA has worked and exhibited as a solo artist, often collaborating with younger generations, for example in his performance series Invocation of the Queer Spirits.
In the sixties, he left University with a group of friends to found a free school, a commune, and an underground newspaper. This led him into an adventure with gestalt therapy, radical education, and independent publishing. In 1969 he formed the artists’ group General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal; for the next 25 years they lived and worked together to produce the living artwork of their being together, undertaking over 100 solo exhibitions, and countless group shows and temporary public art projects.
They were known for their magazine FILE (1972-1989), their unrelenting production of low-cost multiples, and their early involvement in punk, queer theory, AIDS activism, and other manifestations of the other. In 1974 they founded Art Metropole, Toronto, a distribution centre and archive for artists’ books, audio, video, and multiples, which they conceived as the shop and archive for their Gesamtkunstwerk: The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, a kind of meta-museum. From 1987 through 1994, they focused their work on the subject of AIDS.
Since his partners died in 1994, AA has worked and exhibited as a solo artist, often collaborating with younger generations, most recently in his performance series Invocation of the Queer Spirits. Since 1999 he has worked as a healer, an identity that he has also incorporated into his artwork. From 2004 to 2010 he was the Director of Printed Matter, Inc. in New York City, founding the annual NY Art Book Fair in 2005. In 2009 he founded the Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 2013 he was the founding Director of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair. He has taught at UCLA, the University of Toronto, and the Yale School of Art.
AA Bronson’s work—as an artist, healer, curator, and educator—is dominated by the practice of collaboration and consensus. From his beginnings in a free school and commune, through his 25 years as one of the artists of General Idea, in his deep involvement with founding and developing collaborative and social structures such as Art Metropole, the NY Art Book Fair and AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans focusing on the politics of decision-making and on living life radically as social sculpture. AA Bronson holds many awards and honorary doctorates. In 2008 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2011 he was named a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres by the French government.
AA Bronson and General Idea are represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin, and Maureen Paley, London. General Idea is also represented by Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich. You can find a biography for AA Bronson here.
Dr Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator based in Helsinki, Finland. Paul O’Neill is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, since September 2017. PUBLICS is a curatorial agency, contemporary art commissioner, event and exhibition space with a dedicated library and reading room in Helsinki. See more details here
Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Centre for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York where he also curated the extensive exhibition, We are the Centre for Curatorial Studies, at Hessel Museum, (2016-17) and The Visitor Talks Programme (2013-17). The Paul O’Neill Archives (1993-2024) are part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection, Dublin.
Paul has co-curated over 80 shows across the world including most recently: 24 Hour Tony Cokes, Amos Rex, Helsinki (2025); AA Bronson, General Idea, Art Metropole, PUBLICS, Helsinki (2024); the year-long Coalescence Happenstance with All Due Intent, Shimmer Rotterdam (2024-25); Coalesce Sometime Later, The Showroom, London (2023-24); The Voice That Remains, (2021-24); Coalescence, ADN Platform, Barcelona (2023); Sonic Tonic Assembly, PERFORMA 2023, New York; and the on-going series of solo and COUPLING shows at PUBLICS, which has included artists such as Felicia Atkinson & Aino Lintunen; Inga Meldere & Hanele Zane Putnina; Vlatka Horvat & Maarit Bau Mustonen; Dave McKenzie and Maryam Jafri; Eugenia Lim & Anu Pennanen, as well as new presentations with artists such as Natalia Beylis, Merike Estna, Mona Marzouk, KMRU, James Hoff, Noor Abed, Chris Kraus, Harold Offeh and many others.
Paul is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (MIT Press, 2012), which has been translated into many languages. Paul is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, educators and scholar of curatorial practice, public art, and exhibition histories, and most has authored and co-edited numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating. Recent co-edited books are: Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (Apexart, New York, 2024), and CURIOUS (Open Editions, London, 2024) co-edited with Gerrie van Noord, as well as recent anthologies such as Curating After the Global (MIT press, CCS Bard and Luma, 2020). Paul is currently working on an anthology of his curatorial texts called CURED and curating the city-wide exhibition Survival Kit 2027, in Riga.
Since 2017 Paul has been a visiting guest professor in MA Curating at the Latvian Academy of Fine Arts. Between 2005 to 2017, O’Neill was a visiting international tutor at de Appel Amsterdam.