About

Marina Paulenka is an independent curator, artistic director, consultant and educator based in Berlin, working across photography, contemporary art and new media. Originally from Croatia, she brings a post-Yugoslav perspective to research-driven projects on identity, gender, ecology, technology and collective memory. She works internationally with artists, institutions and festivals, with a focus on artists from Africa, Asia, Latin America and diasporic communities.

At 22 she founded Organ Vida in Zagreb and led it from 2008 to 2019. She built it into Croatia’s leading institution for contemporary photography and launched the Marina Viculin Award, the country’s first national photography prize. In 2018 she and Lea Vene received the Lucie Award for Curator/Exhibition of the Year for Engaged, Active, Aware: Women’s Perspectives Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb.

As Artistic Director of Unseen Amsterdam, she widened the fair’s international reach and its support for artists from underrepresented regions. From 2022 to 2025 she was Founding Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Berlin. There she set the museum’s artistic direction from before its opening and presented artists including Candice Breitz, Juliana Huxtable, Šejla Kamerić, Josèfa Ntjam and Shirin Neshat. She also created the Emerging Berlin Program and Fotografiska Days.

She has taught at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague, ECAL, UdK Berlin and Zurich University of the Arts, among others. She speaks regularly at Paris Photo, Les Rencontres d’Arles and 1-54. She nominates for the Prix Pictet, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and the Joop Swart Masterclass, and is a member of IKT and Oracle.

Her ongoing research into the Non-Aligned Movement informs a decolonial approach to curating, grounded in listening, exchange and long-term collaboration with artists, institutions and communities.