Charles Esche

Charles Esche is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. As a white, western European, his academic and cultural focus is on the consequences of decolonial theory for his part of Europe/Eurasia and its long histories of extraction, exclusion and denial. He is interested in how art and culture in these territories reflect those conditions today, and whether a more just and constructive dialogue with other parts of the world is possible from here. One methodology he is currently writing about and developing with others is the concept of demodernising as a way for the global minority to approach the challenge of decolonial thinking in a way that changes their own positionality.

Charles is advisor at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht and professor of contemporary art and curating at University of the Arts, London, where he works in the Afterall Journal and Exhibition Histories research centre and member of L'Internationale Association. He will be a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris in 2026.

Until 2024 he was director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Among international exhibitions, he has (co-)curated are Soils, Van Abbemuseum, 2024; The Meeting That Never Was, MO Museum, Vilnius, 2022; Hurting and Healing, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2022; Power and Other Things, Europalia, BOZAR, Brussels 2017; Art Turns, Word Turns; Museum MACAN, Jakarta 2017; Neither Forward nor Back Jakarta Biennale 2015; How to Talk about Things that don’t Exist, 31st Sao Paulo Bienal 2014, Ideal for Living, U3 Triennale, Ljubljana 2011; Play Van Abbe, 2009-11, RIWAQ Biennale, Palestine, 2007 and 2009; Istanbul, Istanbul Biennale, 2005 and Gwangju Biennale, 2002, Tate Triennial, 2000. His latest publications are The Museum is Multiple, Van Abbemuseum, 2024 and Art and Its Worlds, Afterall and Koenig Press, 2021. He is writing a book on Demodern Thinking with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti to be published by Duke University Press in 2026.

L’Internationale: A Mission Statement in Times of Emergency

This talk by Nick Aikens and Charles Esche will be structured around the seven-point mission statement of L’Internationale, a European confederation of 16 museums, arts organizations and universities. It will be framed by the urgency of the present conjuncture and the need to rethink the public sphere in times of genocide, militarization and ecological collapse.