SHORT BIO

Dr. Joana P. R. Neves was born in Lisbon, Portugal, one year after the Carnation Revolution. She moved to Paris at 18 to study philosophy at the Lycée Victor Duruy Hypkhâgne, Lycée Pasteur Khâgne, and Nanterre University. She completed her Masters in Curatorial Studies at the Fine Arts University back in Lisbon while she worked as an assistant to the artist Julião Sarmento and as an art critic (Dardo Magazine, Jornal Público, Lapiz, Pangloss). She was video curator for CAV in Coimbra until 2003, when she relocated to Paris to work as co-director of the Chantal Crousel gallery, followed by schleicher+lange gallery, after which she was invited to be the guest curator of Orange Rouge until she moved to London in 2012. There, she assisted the director in developing the contemporary section of Marlborough Gallery (Mayfair), a short adventure which marks a shift towards independent writing and curating. She completed her PhD in Art History at Kingston University (Techne funded): Following the Indexical Line: Etienne-Jules Marey, Douglas Huebler and Sol LeWitt. She was appointed Artistic Director of Drawing Now Paris art fair (since 2018). In 2021, she co-launched the residency project Worlding in Elephant and Castle with Diogo Pimentão, and in 2024 she launched her Podcast Exhibitionistas, one of The Guardian's readers' choices of best new podcast of 2024. 

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​​She worked as a writer and curator alongside her commercial gallery duties. Her exhibitions include: Morel’s Island at the Centre Photographique de Pontault-Combault (2008); ​La Méthode Graphique et Autres Lignes at the centre d'art de Gennevilliers (2010) with artists Helena Almeida, Davide Balula, Silvia Bächli amongst others; Rituals, Repetitions, Constraints, Temptations (Part 1) and Reto Pulfer eponymous solo exhibition (Part 2) at mrac Sérignan as Roven curatorial platform (2015); The Lynx Knows no Boundaries at the Ricard Foundation, Paris (2015); The Collection of Mr. X, the Man Who Lived 500 years at Galeria Alberta Pane, Venice (2020); BLANK - Irma Blank touring solo exhibition (co-curated with Johana Carrier) at Culturgest - Lisbon, MAMCO - Geneva, CAPC - Bordeaux, CCA - Tel Aviv, ICA - Milan, Museo Villa Dei Cedri, Bombas Gens Centre d'Art (2019 - 2022), Our Ancestors Bloom Overground at Patrick Heide Gallery, wit Maja Escher, Barbara Nichols, Gozde Ilkin, and a Lise Duclaux, London (2023)... 

She has written regularly for academic and exhibition publications such as Stéphane Landry for Musée Jenisch,  Elle Peint, ITV Karina Bisch (2017,Connoisseurs), Scrivere Disegnando (Centre d'art contemporain de Genève, 2020), Unskilled Beauty or Ugly Truth? A Dialogic Study of the Indexical Line (Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice - Volume 6, 2021), Stella Geppert Monographic publication (Distanz, 2025), Sara Bichão's upcoming publication Square Root, and several articles for the magazine Roven... She speaks and writes in Portuguese, English, French and she is fluent in Spanish.

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Currently, she's working on Isabel Ferreira's first solo exhibition in Portugal at MAAT, Lisbon (September 2025) and her first book The Female Drawing Machines (Bloomsbury August 2026).

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She publishes a new episode on her Podcast Exhibitionistas every two weeks and she writes weekly for Substack.​​​​

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