I am Annika Turkowski, an art historian, lecturer, writer, and curator specializing in contemporary art, photography, architecture, and the moving image. My research focuses on the intersection of art and technology, the history and practice of curating, interdisciplinary approaches, and artistic publishing practices.
Currently, I am the Project Director of Operndorf Afrika (Berlin/Ouagadougou), and the co-founder of CUCO – curatorial concepts berlin. Additionally, I work as a freelance editor in the fields of art, culture, and non-profit initiatives.
I specialize in lens-based arts and contemporary visual culture with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary and international programming. Beyond photography and visual arts, I am interested in exploring related fields such as science, the performing arts, cinema, publishing, and architecture. With ten years of experience, I have worked on bringing these disciplines together in experimental, multidisciplinary programs. My work spans art exhibitions, film festivals, lecture series, publications, music, and performance projects. My curatorial practice examines the politics of representation, the process of de-archiving non-hegemonic narratives in photography, and the relationship between humans and their natural and built environments.
I hold two MAs—one in Art History and Visual Cultures from Humboldt University in Berlin and another in Culture, Criticism, and Curation from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. In the past, I have worked in various roles at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof in Hamburg, the publishing collective Archive Books, and Vice Versa Art Books.
Operndorf Afrika
2020 – Present
Operndorf Afrika is an international art project based in Burkina Faso, West Africa. It was initiated in 2009 by the late German artist Christoph Schlingensief and is headed by Aino Laberenz since 2010. Under the motto “Learning from Africa” the project offers a platform for intercultural exchange programs and postcolonial discourse, and aims to present and project a new and particularly differentiated picture of the African continent. The project consists of an elementary school with an art focus, a library, a clinic, a sound studio, and guest houses for visiting artists. Since 2015 the Opera Village hosts an annual Artist-in-Residence program, which invites African and non-African artists to live and work together for three months at the Opera Village in Burkina Faso. Since 2020 I coordinate and organize the program, which is curated by Nigerian photographer and curator Akinbode Akinbiyi. All construction projects, cultural projects as well as their financing are coordinated by the Berlin-based non-profit Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH and supported by the non-profit foundation Stiftung Operndorf Afrika directed by Aino Laberenz.
CUCO – curatorial concepts berlin
2016 – Present
Editorial projects (freelance)
2014 – present
CUCO – curatorial concepts berlin was founded in Berlin in 2016 by art historians Hanna Dölle, Katherina Perlongo and Annika Turkowski. The curatorial collective acts as a non-profit association and works at the interface of contemporary art, research and education. It realizes exhibitions focusing on contemporary photography and video art, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between humans and their natural and built environments. By approaching current social issues from an artistic standpoint, the exhibitions projects visually engage in socially and aesthetically relevant discussions, catering to diverse audiences. CUCO berlin places great importance on close collaboration with emerging and established artists, as well as partnerships with various institutions. The collective views its work as a continuous process of mutual learning and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Its approach stands for an alternative form of exhibition making. A kind of ‘slow curating’ that enables them to think of exhibitions independently of predefined spaces and institutions, but rather with regard to current topics, pressing issues and in close creative exchange with artists and their visions.
Neue Schule für Fotografie
2019 – 2024
With many years of experience in art publishing – both from an editorial and a distribution/marketing perspective – I enjoy coordinating and editing catalog projects for institutions and artists. Most recently, the exhibition catalog for Julius von Bismarck's solo exhibition When Platitudes Become Form at Berlinische Galerie (2023), the exhibition booklet and catalogue for the exhibition and research project The New Subject (2024). Currently I am working with the artist Erik Schmidt on a comprehensive catalogue for his upcoming exhibition The Rise and the Fall of Erik Schmidt (opening September 2025) at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art.
From 2007 to 2024, I was actively involved with the Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin (Internationale Akademie für Photographie e.V.), an association-run private supplementary school offering photography training and an English-language International Class. With students from diverse backgrounds and a faculty of 20 main and guest lecturers, the school fostered an environment of artistic exchange and critical engagement.
As an art historian and practicing curator, my work and teaching focused on interdisciplinary and intercultural discourses in contemporary photography. In my lectures and seminars, I explored early 20th-century image theories, such as Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, key historical movements in modern and postmodern photography, and the politics of visual representation in contemporary photographic practice. Reading, analysis, and discussion were at the core of my teaching approach, encouraging students to engage with both classical and contemporary photographic theories while critically examining artistic positions in the field.