Jonas Staal

artist and BAK Project Fellow, Rotterdam

Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing) and, together with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, of its pedagogical wing the New World Academy (2013-16). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing). Exhibition-projects include We Demand a Million More Years (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2022), Extinction Wars (with Radha D'Souza, Gwangju Museum of Art, 2023) and Propaganda Station (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2024).

His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, V&A in London, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, M_HKA in Antwerp, Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennale, the 31st São Paulo Biennale, the 12th Taipei Biennale and the 14th Shanghai Biennale. Staal’s publications include Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019) and Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration (The MIT Press, 2024).