Jana Johanna Haeckel is a Brussels based art historian, curator and lecturer. 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 recently served as director of Photoforum Pasquart (Biel/Bienne, 2022-2023), where she has curated solo exhibitions with Bianca Baldi, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Sheida Soleimani, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Salvatore Vitale, and more. Other curated exhibitions involve the group exhibitions "Resistant Faces" at Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich, 2021), "Everything Passes Except the Past" at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2020), accompanied by a publication with Sternberg Press (2021), 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) and "Performing the Border" at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich (Vienna, 2017).
Jana is associate researcher at the Lieven Gevaert Centre (KU Leuven/UCL), where she was a doctoral researcher (2012-2016), and served as project manager and curator for the Goethe-Institut Brussels (2017-2021), guest curator at Pinakothek der Moderne Munich (2020-21), curatorial assistant at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2012) and supervised the art mediation programme at Boros Collection Berlin (2009-2012).
She holds a PhD in art history by Université Catholique de Louvain, a post-graduate degree in curatorial studies and a M.A. in art history, comparative literature and French Philology from Humboldt Universität Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin.