Jonas Englert was born in 1989 in Friedberg, Germany, and lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. He studied art with Professor Heiner Blum and Professor Alexander Oppermann at the University of Art and Design Offenbach, receiving his Art Diploma in 2018. During the 2012 to 2013 academic year he additionally studied applied theatre studies with Professor Heiner Goebbels at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, an experience that deepened his engagement with performance, time-based media, and the relationship between image and language.
Englert's practice reflects social-philosophical phenomena and both political and historical narratives through the formats of video, diagram, text, and sound. Working with found footage as well as his own visual recordings, he explores the territory between fiction and documentation, keeping the human being at the centre of his inquiry: as an individual with an interior life, and as a figure shaped by and embedded in societal structures. His work does not illustrate its subjects so much as construct analytical frameworks around them, building visual and sonic systems that make the mechanisms of power, memory, and collective experience both legible and strange. His practice extends significantly into the performing arts: he has created video and music works for productions at the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the Staatstheater Hannover, the Theater Bonn, the Berliner Ensemble, and the Schauspiel Frankfurt, collaborating with directors including Laura Linnenbaum on productions such as Gott ist nicht schüchtern by Olga Grjasnowa, Zeit aus den Fugen based on Philip K. Dick, and Die Brüder Karamasowbased on Dostoevsky.
Englert has received consistent and growing recognition through awards and scholarships. In 2012 he received the Dr. Marschner Prize from the University of Art and Design Offenbach, in 2013 the Johannes Mosbach Scholarship, and in 2017 an honourable mention in the B3-BEN Awards in the category of time-based and immersive arts. In 2018 he became a laureate of the Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe and undertook the Scope BLN Art Residency in Berlin. Further grants followed from the Hessische Kulturstiftung (2020), the Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe Create-Stipendium (2021), the Projektstipendium of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (2021), the Neustart Kultur-Stipendium of the Stiftung Kunstfonds (2022), and the Preis der Marielies Schleicher-Stiftung (2019). In 2026 he received the NEWARTaward at ARCO, an acquisition prize from the New Art Foundation, and the RE-SEARCH ZF-Forschungsstipendium. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg.
His exhibition history spans institutions across Europe and North America. Solo presentations include Simultaneities at Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels (2025), ce qui nous hante at Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt (2025), Palimpseste at the Heussenstamm-Stiftung, Frankfurt (2022), and Things I Think I Want at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2017). Group exhibitions include Performing Portraiture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015), Atlas 2013 at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Looking for Humanity at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (2023), and Gefühlte Wahrheiten. Zeppeline und Nationalsozialismus at the Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen (2026). KORNFELD Galerie Berlin presented Jonas Englert in the duo exhibition Fragments in 2022, alongside Tammam Azzam, and at ARCO Madrid 2023.
