Jennifer Teets is a Houston, Texas born curator, writer, and occasional performer based in Paris since 2009. Working at the intersection of the poetics of science and technology, material culture, literature, and performance, within her work, she addresses the roles of consumption and contamination as an embodiment of thought which then performs, spores, proliferates. Teets holds a double BA from the University of Texas at Austin in Latin American Studies and Cultural Geography (2001) and an MA in Experimentation in Arts and Politics from Institut d'études politiques de Paris (2014). Teets studied under the late sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour across 2013-2014 at Sciences Po.
She is currently guest tutor and curator of
Offspring 2024: Underbelly at
De Ateliers, Amsterdam with a forthcoming publication published by De Ateliers and designed by Joris Kritis.
Her recent exhibition
Intimate confession is a project was held at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston in the fall and winter of 2023/24. The exhibition considered transmission, intergenerational life, and cultural inheritance through the prism of intimacy and infrastructure. A review of the exhibition can be read in
e-flux Criticism. The exhibition includes a forthcoming publication by
Inventory Press with poetry and essay contributions by Kai Bosworth, Lara Mimosa Montes, Juliana Spahr, Roberto Tejada, Ara Wilson and Michael D. Snediker. The publication was designed by Espace Ness, Paris.
Teets has curated numerous exhibitions and talks with artists and thinkers since the early 2000s including:
Intimate confession is a project, Blaffer Museum of Art, University of Houston,
Carbonate of Copper, Artpace, San Antonio,
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).
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,
Établissement 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. Read more on Mif and TWWWO in this interview in
TANK. She is editor of the essay and poetry collection
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
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.
She has written extensively on contemporary art and curating in international art magazines such as
Art Forum,
Mousse, Spike,
Terremoto,
Topical Cream as well as numerous artist monographs and exhibition catalogues.
Teets is an international jury member for the Swiss Arts Council, advising on art, science, and technology.
You can read and download her writing
here.