Maria Hlavajova

Maria Hlavajova has been the founding general and artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, since 2000. In 2008-2016 she was research and artistic director of FORMER WEST, which she initiated and developed as an internationally collaborative research, education, publication and exhibition project, culminating in the publication Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (co-edited with Simon Sheikh, 2017). Hlavajova has instigated and (co-)organised numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), Future Vocabularies (2014-2017), and New World Academy (with artist Jonas Staal, 2013-2016), among many other international research projects. In 2011, Hlavajova organised the Roma Pavilion entitled Call the Witness at the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, and in 2007 she curated the Dutch Pavilion entitled Citizens and Subjects at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice. In 2000, Hlavajova co-curated Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, entitled Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defence. Hlavajova is also co-founder (with Kathrin Rhomberg) of the tranzit network, a foundation that supports exchange and contemporary art practices in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Hlavajova lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht. (2023)

She was a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (1998–2002), and director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts in Bratislava (1994–1999).

Among publications she edited are Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rachael Rakes, 2021); Deserting from the Culture Wars (with Sven Lütticken, 2020); Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (with Wietske Maas, 2019); Posthuman Glossary (with Rosi Braidotti, 2018); and Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (with Tom Holert, 2017).

Links

• Profile on BAK
• Profile on Former West