Jana Johanna Haeckel is an internationally recognized art historian, author, curator 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 is associate senior researcher at the Lieven Gevaert Centre (KU Leuven/UCLouvain, Belgium) and currently lectures at the Photography and Curatorial Studies Department at KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts Gent, where she also coordinates the research cluster Archival Sensations. Prior to this, she has served as director of Photoforum Pasquart, 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 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).
Documentation-Video Group-Exhibition"Fotografie Heute: Resistant Faces",
at Pinakothek der Moderne, 2021, curated by Jana J. Haeckel
Current | Recent
MUSÉE IMAGINAIRE, A Poem on Shared Vision, Group Exhibition at KASK & Conservatorium,
09.02.-25.02.2024
« Dancing With My Eyes Closed: Archive, Body and Chance in the Work of Dayanita Singh », essay,
Critique d’art, 61 | December 2023, 156-173.
Writing New Captions – Reappropriating Narratives on the Photographic Representations of the DR Congo, joint review by Lotte Arndt and Jana J. Haeckel, Troubles Dans Les Collections, October 2023.
Bodies that Glitch, Exhibition Program Spring 2023, and Seeing through Clouds, Annual Exhibition Program 2022, Photoforum Pasquart, Switzerland.
Everything Passes Except the Past. Decolonizing Ethnographic Museums, Film Archives and Public Space, book edited by Jana J. Haeckel, Sternberg Press, London 2021.
Contact: jana.haeckel@gmail.com