Rachael A. Rakes

Rachael Rakes is a curator and writer from the U.S., living in the Netherlands and Greece. She was recently the Artistic Director of the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, 2023, THIS, TOO, IS A MAP;  Curator of Public Practice at BAK, Utrecht; and Head Curator at De Appel in Amsterdam.

Currently, with artist Bo Wang she is at work on a writing project conjuring the Ghosts of the 20th Century thought media detritus, stories, censorships, and migration as a 2024 Uniondocs Fellowship recipient, and is exploring collaborative-led forms of artistic writing in the year-long projects Encodes, Smears, Reals with the support of Mondriaan Fonds. She is a selection committee member for the New York Film Festival, Editor at Large for Verso Books, and a Contributing Editor for INFRASONICA. With artists Laura Huertas Millán and Onyeka Igwe, she organizes the research initiative on alternative ethnographies Counter-Encounters, presented at Tate Modern, Stedelijk Museum, Centre Pompidou, and elsewhere.

Rakes has organized dozens of exhibitions and hundreds of film programs, performances, and discursive programs internationally. She is a Core Tutor in the Artificial Times Department at Sandberg Institut, a lecturer on Curating film at Leiden University, and recently taught at Zine Escola, Parsons School of Art, KASK, The New School, and Harvard University.  Among other publications and journals, she is the editor of Toward the Not-Yet (2022, BAK/MIT Press) and Practice Space (2020, NAME/De Appel) and frequently publishes criticism and essays on art, media, and politics in journals, monographs, and catalogs.  

Rachael@DAI: 

Respondent to the Kitchen of Monday November 4, 2024 at PAF in St. Erme, France. 

Respondent to the Kitchen of Sunday April 14, 2019 in Epen, The Netherlands