Jana Johanna Haeckel is a curator, researcher, and lecturer, based in Brussels. Her written and curatorial work examines image and body politics in contemporary art, focusing on new ethics of photography in the age of the digital and art practices that subvert historical and colonial narratives through archival research. She currently explores visionary institutional practices of care, hospitality, and collectivity, particularly in relation to their gendered, racial, and ecological dimensions, aiming to show how these fair practices can be applied from the in- and outside of institutional structures.
Jana holds a PhD in art history and works as independent curator. She currently lectures at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent (KASK), where she also supervises the research cluster Archival Sensations, and is associate senior researcher at the Lieven Gevaert Centre (KU Leuven/UC Louvain, Belgium). Prior to this, she has served as director of Photoforum Pasquart, in Biel/Bienne Switzerland, where she has curated solo exhibitions with Bianca Baldi, Sheida Soleimani, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Nicolas Polli, Emmanuel Van der Auwera and Salvatore Vitale. Other independent curatorial projects involve, among others, the group exhibition Love, Maybe – Intimacy and Desire in Contemporary Art (Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung Munich, 2025), the nomadic art program "Perruche" for the Goethe-Institut (Brussels, 2018-2021), the group exhibitions "Resistant Faces" at Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich, 2021) and "Everything Passes Except the Past" at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2020), Julien Creuzet's solo show "Knows to feel, the smell of rain..." at Drdova Gallery (Prague, 2018), the annual program "Karma Ltd. Extended" at Acud Gallery Berlin (2018) as well as "Performing the Border" at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich (Vienna, 2017).
Current | Recent
Exhibition
Laura Palau: Mal hora, bon hora, Centre Del Carme, Valencia, 21.11.2025 - 18.1.2026
Interview
Bilderuniversum No 8. mit Jana Johanna Haeckel : Über die Verknüpfung von Care-Diskurs und Fotografie, kollaboratives Arbeiten und "caring structures" im Kulturbetrieb.
Publications
Love, Maybe – Intimacy and Desire in Contemporary Art, Exhibition Catalogue, Distanz
"Embracing the not-knowing: rethinking photographic and curatorial practices as collaborations of care", essay in: photographies Volume 18, 2025 - Issue 1: On Photography and Care, Edited by Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad, Elin Haugdal, Stephanie von Spreter and Hanne Hammer Stien
Contact: jana.haeckel@gmail.com