Stefanie Hessler

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, and the Director of Swiss Institute (SI) in New York. Her work centers artists and ideas through new commissions, transdisciplinary collaborations, and experimental formats, often with a focus on ecologies, technologies, and the aim to promote lasting change. At SI, Hessler initiated the curatorial project Spora, which invites artists to transform the institution through “environmental institutional critique,” alongside operational steps toward climate action. She recently co-curated solo shows by Raven Chacon, Ali Cherri, and Lap-See Lam, as well as a large-scale East Village-wide exhibition titled Energies, which opened in September 2024.

Previously, as the Director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, Hessler co-led the research-based exhibitions Attention After Technology (with Art Hub, Copenhagen; State of Concept, Athens; Tropical Papers, and partners at Princeton University and the Université de Paris); Sex Ecologies, including an edited compendium (with Seed Box and MIT Press); and Unweaving the Binary Code, for which she initiated institutional collaborations for the Hannah Ryggen Triennale. Selected projects as an independent curator include the 17th MomentaBiennale, Sensing Nature, Montreal; Rising Tides/Down to Earth, Gropius Bau, Berlin; Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II, Ocean Space, Venice; the symposium Practices of Attention, 33rd Bienal de São Paulo; the 6th Athens Biennale; and Tidalectics, TBA21–Augarten, Vienna.

Hessler is the author of Prospecting Ocean (MIT Press)and has edited over a dozen volumes. She is a founding committee member of the New York chapter of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), and forms part of the On Seeing editorial collective between the MIT Press and Brown University Library. Hessler was recently named among Apollo’s 40 under 40 and ArtReview’s Power 100.