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    More: Fine Arts

    Art Talks

    [Translate to English:] art talks
    • Laura Amann Marín & Jen Kratochvil
    • Hendrik Folkerts
    • Paulo Wirz
    • Alexandra Martens Serrano
    • Jiajia Zhang

    Every semester, ZHdK's Department of Fine Arts presents a series of public talks with various guests from the contemporary art and culture sector. All talks are held in English. Admission is free and no registration is required. 


    Laura Amann Marín & Jen Kratochvil

    Thursday, 8 October 2026, 6:00 pm
    Room 5.K12, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

    Jen Kratochvil and Laura Amann Marín developed their collaborative practice over four years through Significant Other, the project space they founded in Vienna in 2017. Their work addressed questions of institutional hierarchies and the relationship between off-spaces and museums, seeking to build bridges by juxtaposing the former West and former East and demonstrating the possibility of an equal dialogue.

    Laura Amann Marín is a curator and architect with Austrian-Chilean roots. A graduate of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, she was part of the curatorial team at Kunsthalle Wien under the direction of the collective WHW from 2019 to 2024. She has also taught at the Institute of Art and Design at Vienna University of Technology.

    Jen Kratochvil is a curator from the Czech Republic. From 2021 to 2024, they were Director of Kunsthalle Bratislava. Previously, they worked with institutions and independent platforms including Rudolfinum Gallery, the National Gallery in Prague, Plato Ostrava, m3 Festival, Photograph Festival and Entrance Gallery. They have also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

    Laura Amann Marín and Jen Kratochvil photo by Fritz Enzo ©

    Hendrik Folkerts

    Thursday, 29 October 2026, 6:00 pm
    Room 3.E08, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

    Hendrik Folkerts is Chief Curator of Program at Kunsthaus Zürich. His curatorial practice centres on liveness and on how the vocabularies, processes and practices of performance can migrate into curatorial and museum practice, contributing to what he describes, drawing on artist and writer Every Ocean Hughes, as a ‘restless’ museum.

    Previously, Folkerts was Curator of International Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago; Curator at documenta 14; and Curator of Performance, Film and Discursive Programmes at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

    His recent exhibitions include House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting (2026), Karol Radziszewski: The Classroom(2026), Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit (2025), Cally Spooner: Deadtime, an anatomy study (2025), Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product (2024), Katalin Ladik: Ooooooooo-pus (2023) and Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Time (2022). Research and writing form an important part of his practice, and he regularly contributes to exhibition catalogues and artists’ monographs.

    Hendrik Folkerts photo by James Taylor-Foster © with special effects by Irena Haiduk

    Paulo Wirz

    Thursday, 19 November 2026, 6:00 pm
    Room 3.E08, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

    Paulo Wirz (b. 1990, Pindamonhangaba, Brazil) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Working across sculpture, site-specific installation, photography and video, he explores the symbolic systems through which societies remember, preserve and imagine themselves. Drawing on funerary rituals, domestic spaces, the ludic and oneiric worlds, his practice examines questions of preservation, transmission, material attachment, visibility and invisibility.

    Wirz obtained a BA in Photography from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2017 and an MFA from HEAD Genève in 2019. He received a Swiss Art Award in 2021 and has participated in residencies and fellowships at Fondazione Antonio Ratti, ZQM Berlin, Pro Helvetia Cairo, Collegium Helveticum ETH Zürich, New Europe College, Bucharest, Iméra, Marseille, and FAAP, São Paulo.

    His work has been presented at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Kunsthalle Basel; Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg; Kunsthalle St. Gallen; Kunsthalle Arbon; Kunst Museum Winterthur; Helmhaus Zürich; Archivio Conz, Berlin; CCR Mucem, Marseille; and SupraInfinit Gallery, Bucharest.

    Paulo Wirz

    Alexandra Martens Serrano

    Thursday, 12 November 2026, 6:00 pm
    Room 3.E08, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

    Alexandra Martens Serrano is a Salvadoran Dutch artist and researcher based in Amsterdam.  

    Raised between diverse cosmologies in El Salvador, Vietnam, Mexico City, and the Netherlands, her interests and artistic language are driven by the concept of Nepantla, which refers to a position of perspective, loss, and power by existing in the 'in-between'. Her research samples cultural practices and historical memory into mutated constellations that foreground counter-colonial narratives interconnected by imagination, species, and media. Expressed through image, video, drawing, and sculpture, she explores ecology and technology as cross-temporal civic territories, brimming with political resistance, ruptures and celebration.  
     
    She holds an MA Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute (2022) and has been a resident at G.A.S Foundation in Nigeria (2024), LAGOS in Mexico City (2019) and Deltaworkes in New Orleans (2018) amongst others. 

    Her work has been exhibited internationally including presentations at Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam, 2026), Kedu Lagos (Nigeria, 2024), Espace LABO (Geneva, 2024), Future Gallery (Berlin, 2023) and Centrale Fies(Italy, 2022).  

    She has taught or lectured at institutions including the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague, and is supported by organizations such as Mondriaan Fonds, Stroom, and the Creative Industries Fund. 

    Alexandra

    Jiajia Zhang

    Thursday, 3 December 2026, 6:00 pm
    Room 6.K02, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

    Jiajia Zhang (b. 1981, Hefei, China) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Working with video, sculpture and installation, she creates a language of contemporary images that playfully traverses the permeable boundaries created by new media, challenging established definitions and notions of the private and public.

    Zhang studied architecture at ETH Zurich and photography at the International Center of Photography in New York, and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2020.

    Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including at Swiss Institute, New York; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels; Fluentum, Berlin; Swiss Art Awards, Basel; FriArt, Fribourg; Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard, Paris; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; and Istituto Svizzero, Milan.

    Jiajia Zhang photo by Barbara Signer ©