Annelies Thoelen

Annelies Thoelen is a curator at Z33, House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Hasselt. She obtained a master's degree in Art Science from KULeuven in 2008 and a PhD from UHasselt in 2015. Annelies started her career in 2013 at Design Flanders, where she was responsible for European design projects and Flemish design policy. She curated the exhibition Konijn met Pruimen (2015), and collaborated on the selection and catalogue of the 8th Triennial of Design in Ghent (2016). She was editor of design magazine Kwintessens, published the handbook "Public Service Design" (2015) and served on assessment committees for Flemish art subsidies.

As curator at Z33, Annelies organises exhibitions such as "Oooh. Back to Normal?" (2020), "A Combmaker's Tale by Unfold" (2020) and "Current Age by Studio Plastique" (2021), "Seasonal Neighbours: Our Invisible Hands" (2022), "Fitting In. Fluid identity in world of multitude" (2022), and "Healing Water" (2023) and is responsible for the projects on Flemish design policy. Annelies also sits as international design advisor on the assessment committee of the Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie in Rotterdam and is a member of the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design in Ghent. She has also been teaching design history and design actuality at LUCA School of Arts, Genk, since 2015. As an independent critic, Annelies has published in this is tomorrow Contemporary Art Magazine, HART, Kwintessens and New Ceramics, among others. She is also a board member of oKo and M HKA, and chairman of Platform 0090.