Dr Yaiza Hernández Velázquez

Staff details

Position Lecturer in Visual Cultures
Department Visual Cultures
Email y.hernandezvelazquez (@gold.ac.uk)
Dr Yaiza Hernández Velázquez

I am a transdisciplinary researcher, with a particular interest in the histories and theories of curating, archiving and museum-making and in the visual cultures of tourism .
Before joining Goldsmiths in September 2019, I worked at Central Saint Martins-UAL for six years, teaching across the MRes Art and leading the MRes Art in Exhibition Studies.

Before that I worked for over a decade in art institutions. 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

I am the Programme Leader for the BA History of Art at Goldsmiths Visual Cultures and co-lead for Education Diversity and Inclusion.
During the 2023-24 academic year, I will be teaching the following undergraduate modules:

  • Museums, Galleries and Exhibition, Expanding the Field I (module convenor)
  • Museum, Galleries and Exhibitions, Expanding the Field II (module convenor)
  • Seeing and Showing
  • Curating the Contemporary

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 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 its embroilment with forms of extraction that draw from colonial models.

During the 2023-24 academic year, I have been working on the following publication projects:

– "La Universidad que Nunca Fue", a long history of academic capitalism in UK higher education , in A. Collado (ed.), En Obras te Veas, Universidad de Granada, in print.

– "El corazón de las tinieblas, o la historia de una exposición contada desde el lugar equivocado", an essay on the difficulty of writing the history of exhibitions, in L. Vallés (ed.), El Ensayo de la Exposición, Bulegoa/Editorial Concreta, in print.

– Coleccionismo, Universalismo, Extinción, a monograph on the links between the discovery of extinction and the birth of the museum, under contract with TEA (expected publication date Dec. 2024).

– A public programme on Terminal Tourism held during the Autumn term at Goldsmiths, including contributions by Isaac Rose, Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, Ralph Kistler, Aura Cumes, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Raoul Bianchi, Vernadette Vicuña González, Mary Louise Pratt and Lucy Lippard. I am currently preparing an edited collection of writings on the same topics.

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.. 2023. 'Looking for the Exhibition in all the Wrong Places'. In: Symposium – QUESTIONS OF EXHIBITING. Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany 14 - 15 July 2023.

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

– [contra]panorama, a year-long project at MACBA running between February 2024 and March 2025, produced in collaboration with the departments of Education, Public Programmes and Radio Web Macba. Second edition of the Panorama triennial [https://www.macba.cat/en/exhibitions-activities/contrapanorama]

– 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]

– AMA journal, [https://artium.eus/en/publications/item/61263-ama-00-zeru-bat-hamaika-bide]

Research projects

2023-2024: I+D+i Museos de arte contemporáneo en España: su engarce territorial e internacional (PID2022-139553NB-100) funding code MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/50110001
Member of the research project on Contemporary art museums in Spain, funding code MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/50110001 and FEDER: "Una manera de hacer Europa"

2019-2023: Member of the research project TURICOM
TURICOM, The Tourist Experience: Image, Body and Death in the Culture of Leisure, funding code PGC2018-093422-b-i00 (MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE)

2018-2020: – Art and Decolonisation, with Afterall, Decolonising the Arts Institute and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriandbriand, MASP
Supported by the Newton Fund

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

Ms. Daphna Westerman: The Archive of The Self-Exilers: Artists During Times of War. The Case of Israel-Palestine (second supervisor)

Ms. Hannah Wroe, Marianne North in Brazil: Gender, Female health and Plant Horror