Jennifer Teets is an American curator, writer, researcher and occasional performer. Within her work, she addresses the roles of consumption and contamination as an embodiment of thought which then performs, spores, proliferates. Teets studied under sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour at the
Sciences Po Experimentation in Arts and Politics program in 2013-14.
She is currently at work on
Intimate confession is a project a major group exhibition to open at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston in October 2023, one in a series of exhibitions taking place in Texas based museums and arts organizations on the intersection of cultural inheritance and infrastructure. It includes a forthcoming publication published by Inventory Press.
In September 2023 she curated
Conduit House at April in Paris, Aerdenhout, Netherlands.
Conduit House features artistic positions engaging the body as a liminal space and architecture, conducive to private transactions. Sheaths, skins, and surfaces meet in the exhibition to reflect on dwelling, energy expenditure, appliance and utility in the context of domestic space.
In 2022, she curated the group exhibition
Carbonate of Copper, at Artpace, San Antonio.
Together with artist/philosopher Lorenzo Cirrincione she curates
Elusive Earths, an ongoing in situ work, process, and inquiry that looks to the elusiveness of rare clays, soils, and earths with forgotten origins. Recent exhibitions and talks include:
4th Istanbul Design Biennial,
documenta14,
Parallel Oaxaca,
Etablissement d’en face amongst others. Reviews of the exhibition can be read in
Frieze and
Art Agenda.
Aside from curating, she convenes and directs
Matter in Flux (MiF), a mentorship circle tied to themes concerned with artistic inquiry, philosophy of science, and ecology. MiF emerged as an activity connected to the late, self-led initiative
The World in Which We Occur (TWWWO) that Teets co-directed between 2014-2019 with Margarida Mendes. Read more on Mif and TWWWO in this interview in
TANK. She is editor of
Electric Brine, published by
Archive Books in 2021 with essays and poetry by Dionne Brand, Barbara Orland, Sophie Lewis, Esther Leslie, Hannah Landecker, and Lisa Robertson.
From 2003-2007, she spearheaded the contemporary art program at the
Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, the former home/studio of Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexico City where she initiated her curatorial practice in the early 2000s.
She was a resident curator at Platform Garanti CAC in Istanbul (2007-2008) and later at the
Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2009). She has guest lectured at the
University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oslo School of Environmental Humanities, University of Oslo, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures Basel, Städelschule Frankfurt, Vilnius Academy of the Arts, Goldsmiths London, CCA San Francisco, amongst others.
Teets has curated numerous exhibitions and talks with artists and thinkers in collaboration with institutions such as:
Intimate confession is a project, Blaffer Museum of Art, University of Houston (2023-2024),
Conduit House, April in Paris Fine Arts, Aerdenhout, NL (2023),
Carbonate of Copper, Artpace, San Antonio (2022),
Wager of Word, Beeler Gallery, Colombus College of Art & Design, Colombus, Ohio (2018),
The Pump, Royal College of Art in collaboration with Flat Time House, London (2015),
Elusive Earths, Etablissement d'en Face, Brussels (2014), Pharmacokinetics of an Element, CAC Vilnius (2014),
Vinimos a soñar, Museo El Eco, Mexico City (2012), A CLOCK THAT RUNS ON MUD, Stereo, Poznan (2011),
This place you see has no size at all, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2009-2010),
Atmospheric Politics, Evens Foundation in collaboration with the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2007).
She is a correspondent for
Artforum and has written extensively on art and curating in international art magazines and other publications. She is part of the jury pool of Swiss Arts Council/Pro Helvetia and advises on multiple initiatives related to art, science, and technology. Her writing can be downloaded
here.