Joanna Zielińska

Joanna Zielińska is an art historian, writer, and performance curator. The ideas of the performative exhibition and performative artwork are fundamental in her curatorial research. Her practice is centered around theatre, performance, performative literature, and visual arts. She is also interested in stirring a discussion on the identity and activity of 21st-century museums. This approach is less bounded by a physical space than by the idea of community, the influence of new media, and the public sphere.

Currently, she works as a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA). From 2015 to 2020, she was the Head of the Performing Arts Department at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. She is the former Chief Curator at Cricoteka, the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Kraków, Poland, where in 2014 she curated the inaugural exhibition for the opening of the institution’s new building and the performance program Nothing Twice. 

Joanna Zielińska is the former Artistic Director at the Znaki Czasu Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Toruń, Poland, where she curated the inaugural exhibition for the opening of the institution’s new building and the institution’s program during 2008–2010.

Since 2011, she has been working on a long-term research project on the artist’s novel, in collaboration with Spanish artist David Maroto. Its central question is how a literary genre such as the novel becomes a medium in the visual arts. As its cornerstone, The Book Lovers have created a collection of artists’ novels with a parallel online database (both in collaboration with M HKA), and complemented it with a series of exhibitions, performances, publications, and a pop-up book store, hosted by international institutions such as: De Appel in Amsterdam, Raven Row in London, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, CCA Glasgow, and the EFA Project Space in New York, among others.

From 2003 - 2007, Zielinska worked with the curatorial collective ex-girls. From 2010 - 2011 she was in residence at International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.