Daniella Géo appointed curator 2019 & 2020

Following an intensive search for a new curator, the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) is pleased to announce that Daniella Géo has been selected for this position. 

The HISK offers a post-graduate course in visual arts and provides young artists from Belgium and abroad with a workspace of their own and critical guidance for a duration of two years.

Daniella Géo, who in past years has been invited to the HISK as a visiting lecturer and jury member, brings in-depth knowledge of the institution allied to international expertise as curator. Attentive to the core questions of our time, she is engaged in fostering new possible narratives and experiences through art. 

Géo aims to reinvigorate the HISK’s singular model, which combines artist residency and individualized support with thorough post-graduate study in the arts, by devising a specially formulated, complimentary program of Seminars, Master Classes and Lectures to be continuously updated according to the candidate laureates’ specific characteristics, needs and expectations as developing artists. While she will continue to promote the diversity of artists and scholars that has been one of the HISK’s key strengths, Géo plans to embrace a more global art arena, expanding the institute’s relationship with the various regions. 

At the same time, considering Belgium’s historical and ongoing status as an influential art center—to which the HISK has made an important contribution for over 20 years—field trips and seminars will explore the richness of the Belgian art scene. Géo’s overall curatorial tasks include the academic and studio-visit program, the development of exhibitions and a new series of lectures, study trips, exchange and public programs.

Since 1997, 269 artists from 45 countries have received the certificate of “Laureate of the Higher Institute for Fine Arts.” The majority of them are now pursuing successful professional careers in the international art world.

Daniella Géo is a Belgo-Brazilian researcher, lecturer and curator. Géo holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Film and Audiovisual Studies from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris III. She has a special interest in the politics of representation and the role played by images in the construction of (common) sense, in particular those related to violence and prejudice. Her practice explores appropriation practices and the aesthetic use of non-artistic images, interdisciplinarity, dialogical and non-hegemonic perspectives, and the political potential of art.

Géo has served as curator at the 4e Biennale de Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the 5e Biennale internationale de la Photographie et des Arts visuels de Liège, Belgium. Recent curatorial projects include the first Latin American retrospective of Roger Ballen, Transfigurações (Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, Caixa Cultural, Brasília); the panorama of Charif Benhelima’s Polaroid work Imagem em Processo (Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói, Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba—co-curatorship); Six Solo Exhibitions (Station Museum of Contemporary Art, FotoFest, Houston—co-curatorship); the group exhibitions TRANS (University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa), Álbum de Família (Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro); the experimental residence project Jean Katambayi Mukendi em Residência-Aberta (Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro), a collaboration with the socially engaged art project Children in the City, Foyer, Brussels, amongst others. She has lectured in symposia and seminars, such as DRC today: a look onto society through art (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro—curator), De-colonising Art, Education, History, Biblioteca Mário de Andrade, São Paulo; Mediating Past, Present, Future, Académie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa, DRC; Appropriation and re-contextualization of photographic images in contemporary art, INARRA- Grupo de Pesquisa Imagens, Narrativas e Práticas Culturais/PPCIS—Rio de Janeiro Estate Univerity, etc. Géo is a docent at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro.