Japan’s Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee has appointed Shabbir Hussain Mustafa as the artistic director of the seventh Aichi Triennale, which will take place in 2028.

Born in 1984 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Mustafa is chief curator at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), a position he has held since last year. He first relocated to Singapore in the early 2000s, serving as curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the National University of Singapore Museum (2007–13) before transferring to the National Gallery Singapore as senior curator (2013–23). From 2023 to 2025, he briefly worked in the UAE as senior curator and head of exhibitions at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. In his current role at SAM, Mustafa is in charge of the institution’s program, research projects, and public initiatives, as well as the Singapore Biennale office and the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He is also a board member of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, and previously sat on the board of Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2017–22).

Over the course of his nearly two-decade career, Mustafa has overseen various major presentations across the globe, including the Singapore Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the Dhaka Art Summit (2018). Moreover, he is part of the curatorial team behind the Rubaiya Qatar quadrennial, whose inaugural edition is set to open in November. 

In a statement, Mustafa commented on his appointment: “[The] Aichi Triennale has built an important place for contemporary art and for the urgent questions that shape our present. . . . I look forward to learning from Aichi and its publics, and to approaching the next edition with attentiveness to the many communities that will gather around it.”

Kalani Ko is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.