Secondary Witness is curated by Maayan Sheleff, recipient of ISCP’s 2012 Curator Award, which offers the opportunity for a curator or curatorial collective to present a new group exhibition. This award was established in 2009 for participants in selected curatorial studies programs, as a response to the lack of opportunities for emerging curators to present institutional exhibitions in New York City.

The video works in Secondary Witness touch upon the notion of testimony and explore the artist's position as mediator. Various personal stories are presented in the included works, which reflect societies in a constant state of conflict and trauma. The artists in Secondary Witness, natives to countries of conflict, examine their place as secondary witnesses and their relationship to protagonists and their testimonies.

Maayan Sheleff is a curator at the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, and Assistant Director and faculty at the International Curatorial Studies Program of the Kibbutzim College of Education and the CCA. In recent years, she has curated many exhibitions and projects in a variety of institutions and in the public sphere, including co-curating ARTLV, the first Tel Aviv-Yafo Biennial (2009).