Alexandra Abakshina/Pistoletova is a director, curator, performer, and hair stylist. Her interests include mimesis, the body, intimacy, dirt, drag, new releases, impossible bodies, male pregnancy, and hospitality. She is the cofounder of the post-anatomical theater MAAILMANLOPPU (2017) and One-night Stand (2019), as well as an employee of n i i c h e g o d e l a t (The Research Institute for Doing Nothing). Ablexandra studies and practices theater as contact, not immersion. She compares her plays to pop-up books, where mountains, forests, and flowers open up, taking the place of characters, and ideas become apparent (often physically so). She is the founder of No Mirrors Salon, a gallery, hair salon, and stage called to build upon the legacy of unconventional art, as well as put feminist theory into practice.

Peter Belyi is an artist and curator whose primary medium is large-scale installations. His works reside in museum collections across the world, including the Margulies Collection (USA), the State Russian Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and his curatorial experience includes shows at the Kunsthalle Zürich and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

Peter is the founder and curator of Luda Gallery, an independent, non-profit research initiative in contemporary art. He received his MFA from Camberwell College of Arts in London in 2000 and teaches at St. Petersburg State University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Peter has also been the winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Best Work of Visual Art, 2010) and the Innovation Prize (Best Curatorial Project, 2014).

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Sasha Braulov is a home product designer and artist. He was born in Leningrad in 1987 and graduated from the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg State University. In 2014, together with his wife Nastya Kopteva, he founded home decor design studio 52 FACTORY. 

Sasha has shown work at Russian and international art and design exhibitions. He became interested in embroidery as a child, and since then has often drawn on this medium in his art projects.

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Luisa Caldwell is a multi-disciplinary artist whose projects range from mixed-media art pieces on paper to architecturally based installations. The work reflects her interests in patterns as cultural tropes and the upcycling of materials.

Luisa’s latest solo exhibitions appeared at Smack Mellon and Humanities Gallery at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Her recent residencies include Polenovo AIR in Tula, Russia, Guild House at Guild Hall in East Hampton NY, and Back Apartment Residency in St. Petersburg in 2019. During a follow up Back Apartment Residency, Luisa collaborated with the St. Petersburg-based artist Zhenya Machneva. Their shared interests in traditional arts drew attention to the disappearance of antique stained glass from residential buildings and their replacement with cheap plastic frames and glass. They collaborated on an immersive installation to inform and encourage the public to resist the destruction of the cities’ beauty and history.

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Street art artist Pasha Cas is well known for his far reaching, socialIy acute works addressing societal indifference, corruption, and ecology.  In his work, Pasha uses minimalistic stencil presentation techniques to create street art that is a manifestation of the present reality and strives to challenge the observer to rethink the current world. He is one of only a few street artists, who choose not to hide their face behind a mask, but rather believe that it is important to have an open dialogue with the public. He was awarded the prize for Best Public Art Work in 2018 by the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Awards for his work Happy New Year, Comrades in St. Petersburg, Russia.

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The artists Kerim Ragimov and Petr Shvetsov (Deus ExCavator) have participated in a multitude of solo and group exhibitions (including as part of the Parazit Art Gallery collective). They began their collaboration in 2016 to explore the phenomenon of digging and all its adjacent practices. Since 2017 they have been the holders of tractor driving licenses with the right to drive wheeled excavators, No. 78SK434220 and No. 78SK434219, respectively. They are nominees of the Innovation Award (2019), laureates of the 7th Post-Excavation Biennale (South Royalton, Vermont, USA 2018), and the Presidential award “People Are The New Oil” in the Extraction category (Terra Scientia Forum, Klyazma, 2017), and participated in the Biennale “Searching For A Person” (Nakhodka, 2019) with their project Deep Media.

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Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively through creative experiences that he helps unfold within the quotidian. He is the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism living at the intersection of creativity and healing. Nicolás is a Senior Lecturer and Social Practice Artist in Residence in the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas, Austin; and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow.

Nicolás has exhibited or performed at Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05/07/21, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art and Politics, City as Living Lab, Princeton University, Anthology Film Archives, El Museo del Barrio, Center for Book Arts, Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Nicolás has received mentorship in art in everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a historic figure in the performance art field.

Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, CEC ArtsLink, The Performance Project, Soaring Gardens, Jentel, Henry Street Settlement, Center for book Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Artists Alliance Inc, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Nicolás holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with Coco Fusco; and an MA from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.  Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011.

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Joshua Goode chairs the Department of Fine Arts at Tarrant County College South in Fort Worth, TX. His artistic practice centers on creating an alternate history and mythology to preserve memories of childhood and to deal with traumatic family issues. He created the fictitious Aurora – Rhoman civilization inspired by the achievements of major historical figures. Having studied history and worked as an archaeologist on many actual excavations, Joshua conducts staged excavations around the world, working with the community as a performance. His constructed artifacts of the invented civilization mix fact and fiction to appropriate and distort the history and myths of each region he engages. The actual and fake objects “found” during these digs have been exhibited in Spain, Germany, Russia, Croatia, Egypt, Italy, China, and the US, among others.

Joshua and his research institute, The Aurora-Rhoman Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, examined the evidence of the ancient civilization in St. Petersburg. Inspired by amateur archeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann who discovered Troy and by past elaborate hoaxes like that of the Piltdown Man, Joshua used his “discoveries” to manipulate and verify the invented civilization. The archaeological performance and installation began with an extensive historical research and ended in an exhibit. The discoveries and claims were false and absurdly comical but based on real research.

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The City of Ustinov (gorod Ustinov in Russian) lasted only 900 days (from 1984 to 1987). Today, it is the city of Izhevsk. Ustinov no longer exists on the map, but a trace of it remains on the IDs of people who were born at that time—people like the members of Gorod Ustinov Micro Art Collective. Their art is bound up with this place which no longer exists. They are working to create their own time and place out of what began as the City of Ustinov.

In 2021, Gorod Ustinov Micro Art Collective changed its name and transformed into Gorod Ustinov Microterritory. In its 10 years of existence, the collective has established only a symbolic landscape, but also a multitude of interpersonal connections. It seems that the City of Ustinov exists once again but is no longer tied to any given geographic point. It moves freely around the world and is present in multiple sites simultaneously—wherever its artefacts are displayed and its friends and sympathizers reside.

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Misha Gudwin practices contemporary art, exploring the inherent links between material and virtual objects. His work addresses the interaction of urban and digital spaces and his works are often based around found urban objects that reflect the industrial face of Russian cities.

Misha’s career began in 2010 with graffiti writing and is a graduate of the Voronezh Center for Contemporary Art’s educational program, as well as the BAZA Institute (2021). His artist residencies include the Foundation of Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantine Sorokin and Winzavod Open Studios (2020). He was one of the winners of NOVA ART, a contest for young artists, in 2019. Misha is also the cofounder of two artist-run spaces, IP Vinogradov (Moscow) and the cultural center Daipyat Gallery (Voronezh).

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Anna Harsanyi is the Assistant Curator, Community Engagement at Creative Time. A curator, educator, and arts manager, Anna is dedicated to presenting art in a non-art context and creating sites that invite participation from audiences outside of the art community.

In 2019 she co-curated In the Historical Present, an exhibition marking The New School’s Centennial which featured commissioned projects exploring the often hidden or dormant histories within the institution. She has organized projects presenting artist engagements within the historic Essex Street Market in New York’s Lower East Side, collaborated with Sheetal Prajapati on a series of events centered around play, and was part of the team of curators who organized No Longer Empty’s exhibition Through the Parlor in a former beauty salon in the Lower East Side. In 2014, she co-curated Hot & Cold: Revolution in the Present Tense, a public art project in Timișoara and Cluj, Romania which presented three artist projects responding to the 25th anniversary of the Revolution that ended Communism. 

Anna has worked in education and public programming roles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York Arts Practicum, and A Blade of Grass, most recently at the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She teaches at The New School.

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Kendal Henry is an Assistant Commissioner, Public Art, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. As an artist and curator, he has specialized in the field of public art for over 30 years. Kendal practice illustrates that public art can be used as a tool for social engagement, civic pride and economic development through the projects and programs he’s initiated in the US and internationally. He believes that the most successful public artworks start with the question, “What is the artwork to achieve?” and takes into account both the audience and surrounding environment in the creation of that artwork.

Kendal served as the Director of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program. He is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development as well as a guest lecturer at various universities and educational institutions, including the Rhode Island School of Design Senior Studio and Pratt Institute’s Arts and Cultural Management Program.

Previously, as the Director of Culture and Economic Development for the City of Newburgh, NY Kendal created the region’s first Percent for Art Program. Prior to that post, he was Manager of Arts Programs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Arts for Transit for eleven years. During this time, he oversaw the commissioning, fabrication and installation of MTA’s permanent art projects, served as a member of the MTA’s in-house design team, and produced temporary exhibitions at Grand Central Terminal. He was also the Curator-at-large at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (MoCADA) in Brooklyn, NY and was elected to serve two 3-year terms on the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Council.

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Olesya Ilyenok is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the urban environment using analog and digital tools. Her practice encompases generative graphics and sound, dynamic light, clay sculpture, photography, collage, stencil graffiti, and video. Her intervention He Said, “We’re There!” was nominated for the Sergey Kuryokhin Award for Best Public Art Project, and her video art project AF:CFFiIV won the Art of Neuroscience 2019 competetion in the Netherlands.

Olesya’s work has been shown at the 5th Ural Biennial of Contemporary Art as well as in group shows at the National Center for Contemporary Arts, the Ural Branch, the Electromuseum, the Zarya Center for Contemporary Art, and Artservatory. In 2020, she received her master’s in Digital Art from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok.

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Marina Karpova is a composer, teacher, and sound researcher. She makes field recordings, leads sound walks, plays cello and piano, writes music in code as well as traditionally, and has organized many music and sound art shows and workshops in St. Petersburg. She has also written music and done sound design for theater, performance pieces, and videos.

Marina studied Music Theory at Glinka Music Secondary School in Smolensk, Musicology at Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory (expelled), and Composition at Saratov Sobinov Conservatory (did not graduate). She has been teaching music theory and giving lectures on music and sound since 2009.

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Olya Kroytor is a performance artist. She is a graduate of Moscow State Pedagogical University, where she studied Art and Graphic Design, as well as the Moscow Museum of Modern Art’s Free Workshops program and the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Olya was nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in 2012 (Best Young Artist) and the Kuryokhin Award in 2014 (Best Work of Public Art), winning the Kandinsky Prize for Project of the Year in 2015 for her performance The Fulcrum. In 2016, she was a Brodsky Foundation Fellow. In 2020, she was also ranked seventh in The Art Newspaper Russia’s list of most promising Russian artists.

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Clarinda Mac Low began in dance and molecular biology and now creates participatory events investigating social constructs and corporeal experience. She is Director of Culture Push, an experimental organization linking artistic practice and civic engagement, and co-founder of Works on Water, an organization that supports art that works on, in, and with the water. She has created performance interventions in urban space with TRYST, and since 2010, she and Carolyn Hall (dancer and marine ecologist) have collaborated on Sunk Shore, speculative tours of the future on real shorelines. TRYST has staged interventions in New York, Finland, Siberia, and Portugal.

Clarinda’s recent work includes: “Incredible Witness,” game-based events on the sensory origins of empathy; “Free the Orphans,” investigating spiritual and intellectual implications of intellectual property in a digital age; and “The Year of Dance”, a self-ethnography of how unconventional kinship structures form in the NYC dance world. Clarinda’s residencies include the CEC Back Apartment Residency, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Mount Tremper Arts. Also BAX Award (2004), Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant (2007) and Franklin Furnace grant (2010). BA in Dance and Molecular Biology (Wesleyan University) and MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice (City College of New York-CUNY).

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Nastya Makarenko is an artist who deals with issues of friendship and sisterhood, invisibility and ambiguity, boundaries and transitions, tenderness and weakness. Her artistic statements utilize handicrafts, photography, video, and performance. Nastya is a member of Nadenka Creative Association and a curator at Yegorka Communal Gallery (together with Anna Tereshkina). She graduated from Event School of Photography and Media Art (Omsk) in 2013 and, in 2017, from the Chto Delat School of Engaged Art (St. Petersburg).

Anna Tereshkina is an artist who deals with issues of family history, kinship, and care, imposture and folklore, passive influence, and horizontal ties. Her artistic statements utilize drawing and printmaking, collage, artist books, sound, and video. Anna’s ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations include the newspaper Nasreddin in Russia, Yegorka Communal Gallery, Shvemy Sewing Cooperative, and the musical duo Red Dawns. She studied art at Omsk State Pedagogical University, graduating in 2008, and at the Chto Delat School of Engaged Art (St. Petersburg), graduating in 2014.

Michael Meier & Christoph Franz work as an artist duo in Zurich. Places and their social, historical and political imprints are the starting point of their artistic practice and through careful, research-based processes, the artists appropriate these places and refer to them with conceptual works. Their thematic focus is on the city both as a concrete field of interaction and as a space for thought. Michael and Christoph deal with the processes of change in our built environment. They use specific approaches to negotiate the sediments of the urban, questioning its conventions and setting them in motion.

In 2020 and 2012 they received the Promotion Prize of the Canton of Zurich, also in 2012 the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize, and in 2013 the Helvetia Art Prize.

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No Excuse is a group of artists from Omsk made up of Maria Rybka, Yuriy Kuzmenko, and Masha Alexandrova. The group engages in flexible healthy living, regular feasting, guerilla gardening, and audio wanderings open to all, rethinking and reappropriating folk holidays. Masha and Maria are graduates of the School of Engaged Art (St. Petersburg); Masha is studying Contemporary Transmedia Art Practice at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia online; and Yuriy and Maria are graduates of Event School of Photography in Omsk.

During the pandemic, the collective established an international online artist residency, Omsky Sanatorium. They have shown work at the 2nd Zheleznogorsk Biennale (The Land of Oz), the inclusive art exhibition The Art of Being in Vyksa (their Roadside Weeds Neighboring Travel Bureau), and Art Propaganda (at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts/National Center for Contemporary Art Ekaterinburg).

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North-7 is a group of artists that emerged from an experimental research base founded in 2013 by a group of alumni from St. Petersburg State Secondary Art School and the Pro Arte School for Young Artists. The artists investigate their Russian surroundings, paying no heed to extant institutional dictates and intellectual trends. North-7 is a self-reliant artistic organism that draws its energy from within, namely from the interactions between its members. While the collective’s members experiment with different artistic languages and forms, performance remains at the core of their practice, as it represents an essential form of live, collective artistic experience.

Group members include, Alexander Tsikarishvili, Nestor Engelke, Piotr Diakov, Leonid Tskhe, Anna Andrzhievskaia, Nestor Kharchenko, Oleg Hmelyov, Liza Tsikarishvili, Sasha Zubritskaya, and friends.

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