Dr. Jana Johanna Haeckel is an internationally recognized art historian, curator and lecturer specialized in photography and new media.
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 from the outside of institutional structures.
She is associate researcher at the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre For Photography and recently served as director of Photoforum Pasquart, in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland (December 2021 - July 2023), where she has curated solo exhibitions with Bianca Baldi, Sheida Soleimani, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Salvatore Vitale, among others, and established a residency program on photography and climate change, in collaboration with the Swiss Council for Arts Pro Helvetia in Johannesburg and Cairo. Prior to this, she has worked for the Cultural Department of the Goethe-Institut in Brussels, where she curated the nomadic art program Perruche (2018-2021) and supervised the international postcolonial project "Everything Passes Except the Past" (2019- 2020).
She was guest curator at Pinakothek der Moderne Munich (2020-2021) and co-curator of the annual Karma Ltd. Extended-art programme at Acud Gallery Berlin (2018). Moreover, she served as project manager for the public programme of the Belgian Pavilion with Dirk Braeckman at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and was doctoral research fellow at UC Louvain/KU Leuven for the project "Photofilmic Images in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture" (2012-2016).
Apart from her curatorial work, she teaches art history and visual culture, from winter semester 2023/24 at the Curatorial Studies and Photography Department of KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts Gent, Belgium. Prior to this, she lectured at University of Applied Science and Art Dortmund, Université Catholique de Louvain and LUCA School of Arts Brussels. She has guest lectured at various universities and art schools, such as HFBK Hamburg, Universität der Künste Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin.
She is an advising editor-at-large of Trigger magazine and a member of AICA Belgium & AICA International. Her essays and reviews have been published in EIKON, The British Journal of Photography, Trigger, Monopol, Mousse Magazine and elsewhere.
Education
2006
Literature Studies at Sorbonne Paris
2011
MA in Art History, Comparative Literature and French at Humboldt Universität and
Freie Universität Berlin
2012
Post-graduate Degree in Curatorial Studies at RUB and Kunstsammlung NRW
2016
PhD in Art History at UC Louvain