Waite, Dr Jason

Academic background

Jason Waite holds a DPhil in Contemporary Art History and Theory from the University of Oxford, an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, London, and a BA from Lewis & Clark College. He was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York.

Most recently he was the 2024-2025 Postdoctoral Fellow of the Arts at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Presently, Waite teaches Art History at St. Anne’s College, is the editor of Art Review Oxford, and is an affiliated fellow at the Panel on Planetary Thinking at Justus Liebig University

Teaching

History of Art to visiting students at St. Anne’s

Research interests

Jason Waite is a curator, writer, and cultural worker whose research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary art, political struggle, and environmental catastrophe, with a particular focus on East Asia. His academic and curatorial work explores how contemporary art can act as both witness and agent in contexts of crisis, particularly through non-traditional modes of exhibition and long-duration artistic projects. This is most notably embodied in his work as part of the Don’t Follow the Wind collective, an ongoing exhibition in the Fukushima exclusion zone that addresses the invisibility and long-term temporality of nuclear contamination.

Waite is also deeply engaged in the politics of the more-than-human world, especially as it relates to environmental degradation and planetary precarity. Through fellowships and research residencies he has developed a growing body of work on ecological aesthetics and anti-colonial terrains in art. His interest in how artistic practices intervenes in socio-political and environmental injustices, draws on feminist, postcolonial, and ecological theory. His writing regularly attends to issues such as toxic landscapes, more-than-human agency, and the limits of visibility in the wake of disaster.

Waite’s curatorial practice emphasizes collective authorship, insurgent pedagogies, and infrastructural critique. He has curated over fifty exhibitions across the world, focusing on projects that reimagine forms of political organization, translocal solidarity, and institutional resistance. His curatorial frameworks often engage with “prefigurative infrastructures”—spaces and practices that anticipate alternative futures—drawing from grassroots organizing, art activism, and counter-institutional experimentation. Whether addressing nuclear fallout, housing policy, or censorship, Waite positions art as a method of critical inquiry and practice that aims to cultivate new imaginaries and modes of cohabitation in the face of global crisis.

Recent Publications

Waite, Jason and Nikolaus Hirsch, eds., Don’t Follow the Wind. London: Sternberg Press, distributed by MIT Press, 2021. Book Reviewed in Third Text Journal .

Waite, Jason. “Can Unseen Art Be a Beacon?: Don’t Follow the Wind and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.” Disclaimer Journal. January 2025.

Waite, Jason. “Book Review: Tuschi Earthly Material in Contemporary Japanese Art.” CAA Journal. December 2024.

Waite, Jason. “Listen to the City Contesting Urban Necropolitics Against Disability: The Case of the 2017 Pohang Earthquake in South Korea and its Aftermath Through the Project.” No One Left Behind.” FIELD Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism. Issue 27, Spring 2024.

Waite, Jason. “Unsettled Ghosts in Ex-Africa: Okwui Enwezor’s 2nd International Biennale of Contemporary Art Seville (2006).” e-flux Journal. November 2024.

Waite, Jason. “Bontaro Dokuyama’s Even After 1,000 Years.” Burlington Contemporary. Issue 9, November 2023.

Waite, Jason. “Para-zomia: Cultivating Interdependence in Koenji.” e-flux Journal. No. 134, March 2023.

Waite, Jason. “The Entropic Silence of Fukushima.” In Don’t Follow the Wind, eds. Jason Waite and Nikolaus Hirsch. London: Sternberg Press, 2021.

Waite, Jason. “Traversing Material Realities: The Unsettled Practice of Chiharu Shiota” in Chiharu Shiota, ed. Christelle Havrenek. Prague: Kunsthalle Praha, January 2025.

Waite, Jason. “Fukushima: Dispatch from an Exclusion Zone.” artasiapacific, vol. XIX, 2024.

Waite, Jason. “Feminist Insurgent Planning Against Disaster Capitalism.” In Listen to the City, ed. Listen to the City, Seoul: ARKO, 2023: 48-63.

Waite, Jason. “Review: 14th Gwangju Biennale.” e-flux Criticism. May 2023.

Waite, Jason. “Review: Okayama Art Summit 2022.” e-flux Criticism. December 2022.

Waite, Jason. “Book Review: David Elliott, Art and Trousers: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Asian Art.” Art Review Oxford. Spring 2022.

Waite, Jason. “The Entropic Silence of Fukushima.” e-flux Architecture Journal, April 2020.
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Waite, Jason. “Cultural Workers and the Energy Paradox.” Art Papers 43, no.1, Spring, 2019.

Waite, Jason. “Jimmie Durham, Jon Rafman, Ryoji Ikeda.” In May You Live in Interesting Times: 58th Biennale of Venice. Venice: Fondazione Biennale, 2019.

Exhibitions (selected)