Tom Engels appointed Artistic Director of the Grazer Kunstverein. He was selected by a jury of academics and art professionals for his curatorial visions and forward looking art ideas.  

BY KAZAD

GRAZ, AUSTRIA- Tom Engels is the new artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein. He was selected from 100 applicants from home and abroad by a jury. According to the jury, it was difficult to “draw a shortlist from the variety of high-quality applications.”  However, in the end, the jury picked Tom Engels whose tenure begins October 1, 2021.  

The jury included Georg Mayer-Heinisch, Alexander Isola, Stefan Stolitzka and Georg List (the board of Grazer Kunstverein) and Adam Budak (director Kestner Gesellschaft). Others are Vanessa Joan Müller (art historian, writer and curator), Michael Grossmann (Kulturamt Graz), and Tanja Gurke (Grazer Kunstverein).

Grazer Kunstverein Jury Selects Tom Engels

Engels succeeds Kate Strain, who is leaving the art institution after five successful years of directorship. She is going to establish Ireland’s first Kunstverein. An astute art professional, Strain was instrumental in developing a practice-based approach at Grazer Kunstverein. She invited international artists to locate the production of new work in Graz, and also engaged with multiple publics. Additionally, strain supported the development of original, ambitious, and often performative artistic projects.

Strain has left big shoes for Engels to fill.  There are clear indications that he is capable. Innovation is a key factor in his selection as the new artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein. The Jury notes:

Tom Engels intuitively convinced us with his transdisciplinary approach and his precise analysis of the Kunstverein as well as its opportunities and potentials. The program he has in mind departs from close collaborations with artists and puts them and their works center stage. His curatorial concept emphasizes a poetics and politics of the body and belonging.

Beyond Engels’s deep understanding of the Kunstverein, his plan to improve membership is another reason for his selection. According to the jury, Engels “reconsiders what membership might mean today within the Kunstverein as a member-based institution and beyond.”

Engels’s idea is to establish mediation between Kunstverein and its members by emphasizing intertwined programs, narrative structures, and exchange. They found the idea profound:  “His approach is profoundly contemporary without ignoring the history of the Kunstverein, unconventional in a positive sense, and focuses both on the local and the international.”

The jury is confident of Engels’s ability to lead Kunstverein into the future. “In Tom Engels, the Grazer Kunstverein has found an artistic director who will continue to position the institution as one of the leading ones of their kind,” it wrote.

Tom Engels: Curator, Editor, Writer and Dramaturge

Tom Engels is a seasoned curator whose practice bridges performance, choreography, and visual arts.  He is currently Associate Curator for trust & confusion (2021) at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, in collaboration with Xue Tan and Raimundas Malašauskas. Engels also serves as the editor of voices, trust & confusion’s online audio program.

Tom Engels is the initiator of front (2021), Brussels, where he has presented artists including Trevor Yeung, Julie Peeters & Elena Narbutaitė, and Hamish Pearch. His other recent curatorial projects include Touch Release, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden (2021), Techno-Intimacies in collaboration with Joanna Zielińska, M HKA, Antwerp (2021), Hana Miletić: RAD/Materials, Haus, Vienna (2020), another name, spoken, Jan Mot, Brussels (2017) and the series Matters of Performance at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Ghent (2017-2019).

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Engels is an editor, writer, and educator. He is the co-editor of Conversations in Vermont: Steve Paxton (2020), published by Sarma, for which he received a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archive Research Grant. Engels collaborated with choreographers such as Alexandra Bachzetsis during Documenta 14, Athens, and Kassel. He also worked with Mette Ingvartsen for steirischer herbst, Graz. Engels also worked with Mette Edvardsen, Bryana Fritz and PRICE/Mathias Ringgenberg. Since 2013, Engels has held a visiting professorship at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) and various art institutions.

What does the future holds for Grazer Kunstverein with the appointment of Tom Engels as new artistic director? Share your thoughts. Leave a comment.