(Netherlands)

Jan van Esch is a Dutch visual artist and cultural entrepreneur, currently working on the topic of a remedy for the toxicity of gifts.

He holds a M.A. in Anthropology and an M.S.C. in Public Health. Jan has extensive public health and social international development experience from his years in Russia, USA, Nigeria and Tanzania. In 2010 he turned fulltime to the arts. From 2011 to 2016 he was director of Nafasi Art Space, Tanzania’s biggest contemporary art center. In 2017 he returned to Europe and was one of the artist-displacements residents at ZK/U in Berlin, collaborating with the Berlin Red Cross. In 2018 he was the curator of the Culture Initiative residency and exhibition for the International AIDS conference. In winter of 2018/2019 he travelled extensively in Central Asia for an assessment of the Swiss Arts and Culture program.