Asia Bazdyrieva is an art historian and practitioner whose interests span across visual culture, (feminist) epistemology, and environmental humanities at large, with particular attention to the project of Soviet modernity with its ideological and material implications in spaces, bodies, and lands. She holds master’s degrees in art history from the City University of New York and analytical chemistry from the Kyiv National University.

Asia was a Fulbright scholar in 2015–17, Edmund S. Muskie fellow in 2017, and Digital Earth fellow in 2018-19. She also co-authored Geocinema (with designer and filmmaker Solveig Qu Suess)—a collaborative project that explores the possibilities of a “planetary” notion of cinema. Geocinema has been nominated for the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research (2020), and the Golden Key prize at the Kassel film festival (2021).

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Rufina Bazlova is a Prague-based Belarusian artist who works in illustration, social artwork, scenography and performance. She gained an international profile for her series The History of Belarusian Vyzhyvanka, which uses traditional folk embroidery medium to depict the peaceful protests in Belarus. Rufina is also known as the author of the fully embroidered comic Zhenokol (Feminnature), which explores the theme of feminism present in folk traditions.

In 2021, together with Sofia Tocar, Rufina founded the Stitchit group and works on burning socio-political issues using the traditional technique of embroidery as a tool of resistance and dialogue. Stitchit involves different communities and individuals in the creation process and blurs the lines of authorship.

Rufina also has a Masters degree in illustration (FDU LS, ZČU. 2015) and a second bachelor’s degree in stage design (KALD, DAMU. 2020).

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Video: Rufina’s ArtsLink Fellowship at Hyde Park Art Center, 2023

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, curator, and artist. Her main research focus is contemporary Ukrainian art, decolonisation, and the ongoing Russia’s war against Ukraine. She also works with selected topics of Eastern European and Latin American art. Svitlana holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

In 2019–20, Svitlana curated the exhibition At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 in Mexico and Canada. She is the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2021) and co-editor (with Hanna Deikun) of At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020).

Svitlana has published her critical texts on Ukrainian art in such academic and media outlets as October, ArtMargins Online, post MoMA, Revue Critique d’Art, Financial Times, Hyperallergic, and The Art Newspaper, among others.

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Aleksei Borisionok is a curator, writer and organizer currently based in Minsk, Belarus, and Vienna, Austria. He is a member of the artistic-research group Problem Collective and the Work Hard! Play Hard! working group. Alexei focuses on art and politics in Eastern Europe during the socialist and post-socialist periods. His work has been published in various magazines, catalogues and online platforms including “L’Internationale Online”, “Partisan”, “Moscow Art Magazine”, “Springerin”, “Hjärnstorm”, “Paletten”, “syg.ma” among many others. Aleksei has written and curated exhibitions on education and unlearning, workers movements and strikes, the history of artistic practices, museum displays and social movements. His current research investigates the temporalities of post-socialism.

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Leyli Gafarova was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, raised in The Netherlands, and is currently based in Baku. She is an independent filmmaker and co-creator of Salaam Cinema Baku, a community based cinema and art space. She has shot and directed “Once upon a Time in Shanghai” (2018), a documentary film about the production of a feature film in the eponymous neighborhood, itself located between Baku’s major railway lines. Her practice centers around processes, research and discoveries.

Leyli is interested in subjects such as gender, national identity, urbanism and (self)- censorship. When producing works she searches for ways to question what is natural and what is constructed. She has curated film programs, educational programs and exhibitions including Hometown Weather and co-curated Things We Sense About Each other.

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Andreea Lăcătuș is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer with a background in film, who works and lives in Bucharest, Romania. An alumni of Sarajevo Talents (Director’s Lab) 2018 and
Midpoint Training 2016, her graduation film, The Beast was selected for several festivals, including A List Shanghai IFF, Golden Goblet Award. Since 2018, her work has been directed to building connections between artists and vulnerable communities, leading a number of interdisciplinary cultural projects of co-creation, cultural education and access to culture, and a close collaborator of Replika Educational Theater Center.

Andreea’s work focuses on social justice and human rights; her artistic research explores topics such as feminism, mental health and socio-economic vulnerability in various forms including theatre, video and performative installations, films, and other multimedia products co-created with the communities she works with. At the moment she is in pre-production with Between the edges of the day, a short film financed by the Romanian Center of Cinematography and continues her work as a cultural producer through various projects.

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Mihai Lukács is a researcher, theatre director, transmedia artist, and cultural manager based in Bucharest. He is also president of the Dialectic Center and holds a PhD in comparative gender studies from the Central European University with a thesis on modernist hysterical theatre directors. His latest artistic practices talk about local counter-histories and the affective research of archives, faith and exclusion, housing policies, the relationship between Roma and non-Roma, public humiliation, and sexual liberation.

Mihai obtained the “Holocaust in Romania” research grant (Elie Wiesel Institute for Holocaust Research in Romania, Bucharest 2019-2022), the “Visegrad” research grant (Open Society Archives, Budapest 2019), the Artist in Residence Grant (CMBB Para Site, Hong Kong 2018), the “500 years of Roma slavery” research grant (Open Society Foundation, Bucharest 2017) and the Museum Quartier Artist in Residence Grant (Transit / Quartier 21, Vienna 2013). The “Kali Tras / Black Fear” theatre performance received the Award for Social Inclusion and Intercultural Dialogue by the National Cultural Fund 2018. Additionally, “MOTHER” performance received the “Cătălina Buzoianu” Award at the Piatra Neamț Post-Present Theatre Festival 2021.

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Maxim in a cultural worker in KOLXOZ collective, Visual Anthropology of Moldova and Oberliht Association. His current research focuses on methodologies for ‘samizdat’ (self–publishing), considering this practice primarily not in terms of object production, but as a platform to build and develop conversations, social situations, and communication spaces. Examples include grassroots publishing houses and distribution centers, open studios and temporary services such as pop-up cafe or libraries.

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Urban innovator, architect of peace and artist Mateja Rot builds solutions for global communities and improves the livelihood of spaces through artistic and architectural interventions. She works at the intersection of community activism, urban design, sustainable architecture, environmental arts and technology and advocates user related solutions that enable environmentally friendly living.

Mateja’s research interests lie in the field of aesthetics and embodied perception in relation to games and play. One of her core research topics is the sustainable development of communities and cities within current technological possibilities. She engages with social and poetic justice, prototyping and co-creation of ecological art strategies together with local community members, and experimenting with everyday urbanism and new urban forms. Currently she is developing a project in Kenya, activating vulnerable groups in Kisumu that are excluded from public participation.

Mateja’s recent urban games include PLAY:CES, featured at Fusion – Urban Games Festival Matera 2019 and Sprites of Meadowlands, a game exploration of green spaces in the city. She intends to dedicate her residency in the US to such topics as sustainable and social architecture, social inclusion and human-centered design, tactical urbanism and placemaking, and augmented and virtual reality. She wishes to focus on underprivileged neighborhoods exposed to social and environmental injustice.

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Asia Tsisar (formerly known as Asia Senina) is a Ukrainian curator and culturologist. Graduate of the Department of Cultural Studies of the State Academy of Culture in Kharkiv, Ukraine, she developed her practice in-between art and cultural studies and focuses her interest on Central and Eastern Europe. Her topics of interest include archives, objects and collections, memory, commemoration, and the modes of rethinking the soviet past. She bases her curatorial work on methods of artistic research and creative storytelling.

Since 2014 Asia has developed projects related to sensitive points in the history of communities, such as Miller Flat, a temporary museum organized in an ordinary Kharkiv apartment in order to rethink the problematic points of the decommunization in Ukraine, The Calendar dedicated to the search for the place of the country’s history in the lives of  Belarussian artists and their place in the country’s history, Instant Time dedicated to the dreams of Ukrainians about the future of their newborn country in the early ’90s.  Currently, Asia is a curator of the Secondary Archive—a platform for women artists from Central and Eastern Europe: Ukraine and Belarus. She cooperates with the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation (Poland) and works in Warsaw.

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