Joanna De Vos

Joanna De Vos is an art historian and curator based in Antwerp, Belgium. She graduated in Art History at the University of Ghent with a dissertation on the male nude photographed by women. As an author, she has been responsible for the creation of several exhibition catalogues, and she has contributed to a number of art publications. As an independent curator, she often conceives large-scale exhibitions. Some of the most recent ones are: ‘Facing Time. Rops/Fabre’ (several locations in Namur, 2015), ‘The Artist/Knight’ (Brussels 2017), ‘The Raft. Art is (not) Lonely’ (several locations in Ostend, co-curated with Jan Fabre, 2017-2018), ‘The Sensation of the Sea. In Honour of Bas Jan Ader’ (2018-2019), a dialogue between contemporary art and the 19th century artworks of The Mesdag Collection (commissioned by the Van Gogh Museum), and ‘The Clown Spirit’, with over 70 international artists (Antwerp, 2020). 

Over the years, Joanna De Vos’ curatorial practice has extended internationally. In 2020, she was the curator of ‘Fontes Amoris’, the solo exhibition of Russian artist Sasha Frolova at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. She has been collaborating with Belgian artist Jan Fabre, as the curator and co-curator for several of his solo exhibitions, amongst others in Italy (‘Spiritual Guards’, 2016 and ‘Ecstasy & Oracles’, 2018, both co-curated with Melania Rossi), South-Korea (‘Loyalty and Vanity’, 2018), Bulgaria (‘There is no escape from art’, 2019) and Serbia (‘Feast of Little Friends’, 2020). 

In 2019, De Vos opened SEEN, a non-profit project space in Antwerp, where she invited international artists and guest curators to create an on-site art installation. After one year at this location, SEEN goes nomadic. The mission of SEEN is to share knowledge and inspiration, with environmental art integrations in unexpected places, and to build an ephemeral ‘scene’: a global platform where curators, artists and audiences can meet and connections can be forged. 

Joanna De Vos uses ‘curious and keen’ as her credo and the guideline throughout all her projects. She lives and breathes art, and creating contemporary art experiences is a way of sharing this passion. Human energies and emotions are at the core of her curatorial practice. Throughout every project, she reaches into the human soul: art often succeeds in conveying our deepest and most elusive feelings and motivations. She consciously researches artists who work around the human essence, intimacy and rapture, and themes that touch upon contemporary sensitivities and the human condition. While staying continuously keen to discover new artists and forge new bonds, De Vos also purposefully builds intense and long-term connections with artists she supports.