HENDRIK FOLKERTS
Hendrik Folkerts (MA, Art History, University of Amsterdam) is a curator of international contemporary art and head of exhibitions at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Folkerts was previously Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (2017-2022); curator at documenta 14, Kassel/Athens (2014-2017); curator of performance, film and discursive programmes at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010-2015); and coordinator of the curatorial programme at De Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (2009-2011).
Folkerts specialises in commissioning and process-based exhibition-making. He has curated numerous solo and international group exhibitions as well as collection presentations, new commissions, and programme series, anchored in the expanded field of performance and building on feminist, queer, and anti-colonial histories of art.
At Moderna Museet, he recently curated the exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product, a survey exhibition of the work of punk queer icon Vaginal Davis that took place across six institutions in Stockholm, including Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Accelerator, Index – The Swedish Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tensta Konsthall and MDT.
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In 2023, he curated Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and Moderna Museet’s collection, which merges the format of a survey exhibition—of the work of Rashid Johnson—with a presentation of Moderna Museet’s collection. He organised solo exhibitions and projects with Every Ocean Hughes and Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) in 2022. In the coming years, Folkerts will be curating large-scale survey exhibitions with Katalin Ladik and Mike Kelley.
At the Art Institute of Chicago, he organised solo exhibitions and presentations of Igshaan Adams, Mounira Al Solh (with Jordan Carter), Vaginal Davis (with Solveig Nelson), Anne Imhof, Naeem Mohaiemen (with Robyn Farrell), Malangatana Ngwenya (with Felicia Mings and Constantine Petridis) and Vivian Suter, as well as Iterations, a series of large-scale performance commissions that presented new works by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Cevdet Erek, Paulina Olowska, Cally Spooner, and Evelyn T. Wang, among others. Moreover, he shepherded several key acquisitions and major gifts for the Art Institute’s collection and was closely involved in curating the constantly evolving presentation of the museum’s modern and contemporary art collection.
As part of the curatorial team led by artistic director Adam Szymczyk, Folkerts was responsible for the two iterations of documenta 14, with a particular focus on the exhibition held in Kassel, Germany. In addition to overseeing numerous new commissions with artists from Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, the SWANA region, and Europe, he contributed to the publications and programmes that were presented as part of the exhibition as a whole.
The programme of exhibitions, performances and lectures that Folkerts curated at the Stedelijk Museum, revolved around hosting artists and thinkers through duration and dialogue, while rethinking the museum as a critical site of public discourse and engagement. Taking place both inside the museum and at various partner institutions in Amsterdam at a time when the Stedelijk was closed for renovation, this public programme reversed the roles: to see the museum through the eyes of the city and the communities it served, and to insert this experience into the DNA of the institution.
Folkerts has (co-)edited various publications and catalogues, for instance, Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product (2024); On the Blue Stage: Rashid Johnson and Hendrik Folkerts in Conversation (2024); Ulrike Rosenbach: Witness (2024), Alexandra Bachzetsis’ monograph SHOW/TIME/BOOK BOOK/TIME/SHOW (2023); Thinking-in-action: A Conversation between Rashid Johnson and Kevin Quashie (2023); Katalin Ladik: O-oooooopus (2023); Igshaan Adams: Desire Lines (2022); Mounira Al Solh: I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous (with Laura Barlow, 2019); The Place of Performance (Stedelijk Studies edition, 2015); Facing Forward: Art & Theory from a Future Perspective (with Christoph Lindner and Margriet Schavemaker, 2015); and Shadowfiles: Curatorial Education (with Ann Demeester and Edna van Duyn, 2013). His texts have been published in journals and magazines such as South as a State of Mind, Mousse Magazine, Artforum International, The Exhibitionist, Metropolis M, Art & the Public Sphere, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues. Most recently, he has contributed to monographs on Rebecca Horn, Ansuya Blom, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Brendan Fernandes, Anne Imhof, Bouchra Khalili, Carlos Motta, Nam June Paik, Vivian Suter, Andy Warhol, Samson Young, Evelyn T. Wang and Elisabeth Wild.
