Inke Arns, PhD, curator, since 2005 Artistic Director, and since 2017 Director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany (www.hmkv.de). She has worked internationally as an independent curator, writer and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. She lived in Paris (1982–86), graduated from highschool in West-Berlin in 1988, studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–96) and in 2004 obtained her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin, with a thesis focusing on a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflected the historical avant-garde and the notion of utopia in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia.

She curated exhibitions at home and abroad, a.o. at the Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Pavillon of the Republic of Kosovo, 59th Biennale di Venezia (Venice), BOZAR (Brussels), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), Muzeum Sztuki (Łodz), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Kunsthall Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Jeu de Paume (Paris), La Panacée (Montpellier), Contemporary Art Centre CAC (Vilnius), Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw), Videotage (Hong Kong), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), Centre for Contemporary Arts – CCA (Glasgow), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Moderna galerija (Ljubljana), Bauhaus (Dessau).

Exhibitions include, e.g. Robotron. Working Class and Intelligentsia (2025-2026), Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun, 2024-2025), Was ist Kunst, IRWIN? (2023), House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm (2022), Technoshamanism (2021), The Sea is Glowing (2020), Artists & Agents — Performancekunst und Geheimdienste (2019), Der Alt-Right-Komplex (2019), Computer Grrrls (2018), Sturm auf den Winterpalast – Forensik eines Bildes (2017).

Awards: In 2024/2025 the HMKV was shortlisted for the *WESTSTERN Art Prize with the solo exhibition You Can’t Make This Up by Silke Schönfeld curated by Inke Arns. In 2023, the HMKV exhibition Was ist Kunst, IRWIN? curated by Inke Arns and Thibaut de Ruyter was selected as “Best Exhibition 2023” in the Welt am Sonntag critics’ survey. HMKV’s exhibition Artists & Agents – Performance Art and Secret Services curated by Inke Arns, Kata Krasznahorkai and Sylvia Sasse received the “Exhibition of the Year 2020” prize by the German section of AICA (International Art Critics’ Association). In 2019, together with Igor Chubarov and Sylvia Sasse, Inke Arns was awarded the Justus Bier Award for Curators 2018 for the project The Storming of the Winter Palace. HMKV received the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Award for art associations 2017. In 2017, HMKV was nominated for the sixth time for this Award (after previous nominations in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2014). In 2013 HMKV received an Honorable Mention in the framework of this Award. In 2013, HMKV’s exhibition Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4’33” – Silence Today was awarded the “Exceptional Exhibition of the Year 2012″ prize by the German section of AICA (International Art Critics’ Association). In 2011 HMKV received the JUMP Annual Sponsorship Award for Art Organisations funded by the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia (Kunststiftung NRW).

In 2021-2022 Inke Arns held the position of Visiting Professor at the Art Academy in Münster, Germany. She has been teaching at universities and art academies in Berlin, Leipzig, Zurich, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam (2000-2017), and has lectured and published internationally.

Books include Tutorials (2024), Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2004), Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) – eine Analyse ihrer künstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien (Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2002), Netzkulturen (Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 2002).

Memberships: Member of the Advisory Board for Innovation Impact Assessment (INSIGHT) of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (2025-2028), Advisory Board of Brandenburgische Gesellschaft für Kultur und Geschichte gGmbH, Potsdam, Board of Trustees of Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf, Member of Goethe-Institut e.V., Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne, Jury member Karl Sczuka-Preis des Südwestrundfunks für Hörspiel als Radiokunst, Board of Trustees of Stiftung Choreographisches Zentrum NRW, Essen.

(as of 7 November 2025)