Dr. Yaiza Hernández Velázquez
Staff details

I am a transdisciplinary researcher, with a background in Philosophy, Visual Cultures and Fine Arts. I teach across the Visual Cultures department, where I have specific responsibilities for Knowledge Exchange and Employability.
Before joining Goldsmiths in September 2019, I worked at Central Saint Martins-UAL for six years, teaching across the MRes Art and leading the Exhibition Studies pathway.
Previously, I had worked for over a decade in art institutions in Spain. Among other things, I was Head of Public Programmes at MACBA in Barcelona, director of CENDEAC in Murcia, and Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at CAAM in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Academic qualifications
- PhD Modern European Philosophy, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University. Supervised by Prof. Peter Osborne. 2017
- MA Visual Cultures, Middlesex University. Supervised by Prof. Jean Fisher. 1999
- BA (Hons) Fine Art, Sculpture. University of Northumbria. 1997
Teaching and Supervision
- Museums, Galleries and Exhibition, Expanding the Field I and II (module convener)
- Visual Cultures as Public Practice (module convener)
- Curating the Contemporary
- Seeing and Showing
Research interests
Much of my work attempts to read critically through the enduring legacy of European Enlightenment and Romantic thought on “global contemporary” art, drawing from decolonial studies and liberation movements.
I am currently completing a monograph on art institutions as sites of artistic, political and philosophical experimentation. I am particularly interested in artistic and para-artistic institutional models that understand themselves (even if no one else does) as prefiguring, supporting or representing radical social changes. I have found valuable resources in institutional models that might not always think of art as their main legitimating discourse, from self-organised activist spaces to community museums.
Additionally, I am interested on the cultural lives of tourism and their embroilment with forms of extraction that draw from colonial models, primarily as a member of the international research group TURICOM].
I welcome doctoral research applicants seeking to work on any of the above topics.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.; Roig, Marc and Hispano, Andrés. 2007. El Rei de la Casa. Adults als deu, nens al quaranta. Barcelona: Institut de Cultura de l'Ajuntament de Barcelona. ISBN 978-84-9850-009-7
Edited Book
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M., ed. 2011. Inter/Multi/Cross/Trans. The Uncertain Territory of Art Theory in the Age of Academic Capitalism. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain: Montehermoso. ISBN 978-84-96845-44
Book Section
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2021. The Islands. In: Imma Prieto, ed. The Islands. Rogelio López Cuenca and Elo Vega. Palma: Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma, pp. 5-14. ISBN 9788418803253
Hernandez Velazquez, Yaiza. 2021. Who Needs 'Exhibition Studies'? In: Bo Choy; Charles Esche; David Morris and Lucy Steeds, eds. Art and its Worlds: Exhibitions, Institutions and Art Becoming Public. London: Afterall, pp. 306-315. ISBN 9783960989172
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. Imagining Curatorial Practice after 1972. In: Paul O'Neill; Simon Sheikh; Lucy Steeds and Mick Wilson, eds. Curating after the Global: Roadmaps for the Present. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 255-270. ISBN 9780262537902
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. Cortocircuitos del Museo y la Autonomía. In: , ed. ¡Autonomía! ¡Autonomización! Santa Cruz de Tenerife: TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, pp. 128-142. ISBN 9788494706592
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. Who Needs “Exhibition Studies”? In: , ed. Critical Museology: Selected Themes Reflections from the William Bullock Lecture Series. Mexico City: Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, pp. 286-303. ISBN 9786073023757
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2018. A constituent education. In: John Byrne; Elinor Morgan; November Paynter; Aida Sánchez de Serdio and Adela Zeleznik, eds. The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation: A Generator of Social Change. Amsterdam: Valiz, pp. 128-131. ISBN 9789492095428
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2010. Archiving to Oblivion. In: , ed. Cuaderno Sesc Videobrasil. 10 Sao Paulo: Edições Sesc-SP and Associação Cultural Videobrasil, pp. 15-21. ISBN 9788579951664
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2004. Museos de Sol y Playa. In: Mariano de Santa Ana, ed. Paisajes del placer, paisajes de la crisis. El espacio turístico canario y sus representaciones. Teguise, Lanzarote, Canary Islands: Fundación César Manrique, pp. 137-154. ISBN 8488550545
Article
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2013. Third-Way Aesthetics. Radical Philosophy(180), pp. 53-55. ISSN 0300-211X
Conference or Workshop Item
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2022. 'Coleccionismo, Universalismo, Extinción'. In: Coleccionismo, Universalismo, Extinción. Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, TEA, Spain 22 December 2022.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2022. 'Encuentro Pensando los Museos Hoy. Mesa 1: Acuerdos y desacuerdos críticos de las nuevas museologías'. In: Encuentro Pensando los Museos Hoy. Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Chile 26 - 29 October.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2022. 'La Universidad que Nunca Fue'. In: Seminario "Muntadas. About Academia". Universidad de Granada, Spain 21 January 2021.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2020. 'The Artworld. A Tourist Guide by Yaiza Hernández Velázquez – The Coming South'. In: The Coming South: Struggles, Epistemologies, Solidarities. Het Nieuwe Instituut, Netherlands 18 December 2020.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2020. 'Heart of Darkness'. In: The Papers of the Exhibition. International Symposium on Curating. Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, Spain 21 – 22 October 2020.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. 'Debate: "Beyond Capitalist Realism" | Internationalism After the End of Globalisation'. In: Internationalism after the End of Globalisation. Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland.
Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. 'Ponerse en el mapa. Cosmopolitismo provinciano en los años del Boom'. In: Art and Tourism Imaginaries II. Spain was never different. Art and Tourism from the 1960s onwards. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain 12 June 2019.
Further profile content
Professional projects
– A Possible Museum, a long-term Knowledge Exchange project with the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) [https://www.macba.cat/en/about-macba/programme-2022/a-possible-museum]
– Art and Decolonisation, in collaboration with Afterall, DAI and MASP, [https://afterall.org/research/art-and-decolonisation-nbsp/]
– AMA journal, [https://artium.eus/en/publications/item/61263-ama-00-zeru-bat-hamaika-bide]
PhD Supervision:
Ms. Valentina Sansone: Social reuse of real-estate assets confiscated from organized crime as a site for the curatorial
Ms. Adi Lerer: Curating from Conditions: Aligning museums’ priorities and values via socially engaged practice
Ms. Jennifer Warren: Locating the Function of Theory in New Institutionalism: The Case of MACBA (second supervisor)
Ms. Daphna Westerman: The Archive of The Self-Exilers: Artists During Times of War. The Case of Israel-Palestine (second supervisor)
Ms. Emma Wingfield: Interconnected Threads: Interconnected Threads: Dyula handwoven cloth, motif development and shifting functions of textiles in Côte d’Ivoire (second supervisor)