Tigran Amiryan is an independent curator and contemporary culture researcher with a PhD in Literary Studies. He is interested in the issues of narrating individual and collective memory in contemporary culture, and studies narrative theory in relation to visually narrated texts. His research and curatorial projects combine an examination of the narration of personal/individual experience, artistic (fictional) representation of and stories about the self, and biography; and a focus on urban space and the environment, which preserve memories about people’s lives even as they are subject to constant neglect and decay.

During his residency, Tigran studied the dynamics of the development and disappearance of urban objects related to individual or collective memory. In particular, he proposed to identify how the memory of a multiethnic city is formed and functions, and which fragments of urban architecture reflect the identities of various religious and ethnic groups.

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Seeing art as the manifestation of already existing harmony, installation artist and poet Zoya Falkova creates her projects around ready-mades and self-organizing systems. She entwines visual practices with poetry employing storytelling, science and bio-art. Currently she collaborates with a Goliath bird-eating spider which spins webs of mesmerizing beauty in settings created by the artist. However, being placed in a political context, the spider’s web also provokes myriads of references to geo-political processes.

Zoya also examines the postcolonial experience, women’s rights and freedoms, and cultures of violence in society. She is the author of The Illustrated Guide to the Meanings of Almaty – a literary map featuring poems, essays and stories and mapping the city through the eyes of its inhabitants.

During her residency in the US, Zoya planed to further her research-based art and poetry projects, feminist activities, bio-art and science-art projects.

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Tatiana Fiodorova is an artist, curator, and teacher. She works in installation, performance, public art, video, photography, drawing, and artists’ books.

During her residency, Fiodorova studied the trends, technology and social aspects of silk production in Georgia. In addition, as part of a summer school organized by the museum, she lead a workshop for artists and researchers on creating artists’ books.

Lizaveta German is a curator and researcher with a PhD in art history. She has been a part of an independent curatorial collective with Maria Lanko since 2013. In collaboration with Maria Lanko and Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta co-curated Fountain of Exhaustion, the project by Pavlo Makov presented at the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. (The Art Margins interview with Maria about her journey to evacuate the artwork for the Biennale at the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine.)

Lizaveta was a guest curator at the Liverpool Biennial (2016, UK). She co-edited the books The Art of the Ukrainian Sixties and Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics, contributed to the educational websites Cultural Project and Sense, and lectured on Contemporary Art at Kyiv Academy of Media Arts.

During the Art Prospect residency, German gave lectures on the history and theory of curation, lead a series of workshops on curating and preparing art projects (the basics of curatorial research, guidelines for putting together a display and writing wall texts, conventions of interacting with artists), and served as a consultant for ArtEast students’ final exhibition. German visited studios and local art institutions. She also studied museum collections in Bishkek and nearby cities as part of research for a book about the history of curation in Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.

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Almaz Isakov is a curator at Laboratoria Ci, a series of initiatives directed toward artistic production and research into contemporary sociocultural processes. He has worked as a specialist for promoting civil society initiatives with the Youth Human Rights Group and the coordinator of the School of Theory and Activism (STAB) in Bishkek.

During the residency, he planned to carry out the project Tourist KIOSK. It re-imagined Flat Space, an outdoor replica of a standard Soviet-era apartment, as an informational kiosk for tourists. It showed the city through practices of critical art research represented by psycho-geographical maps based on guidebooks that include objects and spaces in the city other than the usual commoditized tourist sites.

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Film director and artist Saodat Ismailova divides her time between Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Paris, France. Her film, Aral: Fishing in an Invisible Sea, won the prize for best documentary film at the Turin Film Festival in 2004. In 2013, Ismailova showed her first video-installation piece Zukhra at the Venice Biennale. Her first full-length film 40 Days of Silence about the life of four generations of Tajik women premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2014 and received wide international recognition.

During her residency, Ismailova reconstructed the history of the Central Asian colonizer Alexander the Great, working with contemporary toponymy and landscapes. The project included a series of interviews, photographs and documentation using scientific and poetic texts.

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Ruthie Jenrbekova is an artist, transfeminist, writer, and performer. Since 1997, she has been involved in various grassroots cultural undertakings. She and Maria Vilkovisky run the imaginary Creolex Center.

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Artist Dilyara Kaipova has been working on a series of projects inspired by traditional Uzbek textiles. She has participated in local and international contemporary art exhibitions. Previously, Kaipova worked as a production designer at the Muqimiy Uzbek State Musical Theater and an actor and the artistic director of the student theater at the Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture.

During her residency, Kaipova studied the local textile tradition using the collection of the State Silk Museum as a reference. She conducted a series of lectures, artist talks, and workshops on Uzbek textiles and ways of creatively interpreting museum collections.

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Pavel Khailo graduated from the School of Visual Communication (Kyiv, 2015) and the Chto Delat School of Engaged Art (St. Petersburg, 2017). From 2015 to 2017, he worked with the Kyiv art group Concrete Dates Collective. He is interested in contemporary art in the context of political and economic processes, communications, and games as educational and ideological instruments of the creative economy.

During the residency, he planned to research transitional processes in public spaces that are initiated by various players and hierarchies. Khailo focused on playgrounds and the discourses that surround them, as well as on these discourses’ presence in PR technologies and communications.

Artist Nino Khuroshvili works primarily with books. She is the founder of Traveling Art Books and Tarazo (Leveller), a platform for social critique. She is currently working on independent social and research projects.

During the residency, Khuroshvili taught a series of workshops for the students of the ArtEast School of Contemporary Art on techniques for creating experimental exhibition catalogues. The workshop focused on alternative methods of working with paper, book dummies, and binding techniques, as well as ways of presenting the finished publication to the public.

Artist Dana Kosmina is a co-founder of Pilorama, an open group for urban interventions, and a member of the self-organized art initiative DE NE DE. In 2017, she joined the Hudrada (Creative Committee) curatorial group. She has participated in many international exhibitions, including the Parallel Program of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the Kyiv Biennale, and Burning Man, among others.

During her residency, she planned to study grassroots forms of nonprofit public spaces in Baku. Over the course of her research, Kosmina conducted meetings with local residents as an open laboratory that sought to engage them in activating the urban “UN-SEEN.”

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Sergei Kravchenko is an architect, columnist, and musician. His projects combine local semantics with contemporary approaches to design. He writes the column “How to Love It” (“Kak eto lyubit”), a series of guides to Belarusian cultural heritage sites, for CityDog.by, and has authored a series of articles on Belarusian company towns. Kravchenko is a cofounder, co-organizer, and architect for the Sprava Festival (Belarus). He is one of the avant-garde trio of artists Port Mone and part of the group Hutkasmachnaa, which has created several public art objects and carried out artistic interventions in Minsk.

Artist and architect Andrei Busel combines his architectural work with artistic interventions into urban space. He has participated in various group exhibitions and street art festivals in Belarus, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Ukraine, and Lithuania.

During their residency, Hutkasmachnaa created a serious of objects in urban spaces. The group worked with all sorts of provisional textures—mirrors, photographs, natural materials, found objects and furniture, stencils, text, etc. Over the course of the project, the artists also worked with local media.

Through his work, photographer and activist Sasha Kurmaz analyzes modern society and the ways it can be influenced by an artist’s practice. Driven by socio-political issues, Sasha immerses himself in a local environment, exploring local social conditions, their historical backgrounds, and their political context. This deep research informs his work and resonates with the place where it is created and presented.

Sasha is editor and designer of 5.6, an independent Ukrainian photography magazine, and has shown his work in numerous exhibitions, the most recent of which is Revolutionize, an international research and exhibition project demonstrating that the aspiration for freedom, decent living standards, and respect for fellow citizens are the universal values shared by all people around the world.

During his residency in the US, Sasha wanted to meet with members of artistic communities, activists, researchers and urbanists. He is particularly interested in grassroots initiatives and innovative networks of activists and organizations that explore practical solutions for sustainable development. 

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Aydan Mirzayeva works in installation, painting, drawing, performance, video, and readymades. She has participated in many exhibitions and festivals.

During the residency, Mirzayeva planned to engage with public space. She was interested in studying Kiev’s social context and local communities.

Semyon Motolyanets works in Belarus and Russia. He is a member of the group PARAZIT (PARASITE) and co-founder of the group MYLO (SOAP). He works in performance, installation, and sculpture. Motolyanets received the Innovation Prize (2009) in the category “New Generation” as part of the group MYLO. His works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum, the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Nonconformist Art in St. Petersburg, as well as in private collections in Russia and Germany.

Motolyanets planned to study “common areas” in Chisinau’s urban spaces, installing a series of objects in them.

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Artist Meka Muratova works in video and new media. She explores themes of social change, nationalism and identity, post-Soviet and Central Asian culture, and cultural and natural heritage.

During her residency, Meka worked on a video project and participated in a public discussion on the issues of contemporary Tajik national identity.

Photographer and researcher Daryna Nikolenko works with photography, video, and text. Her artistic practice deals with transformations in public city space (visual culture, memory, and everyday practices). Her writing has been published in the online journal KORYDOR.

During her residency, Nikolenko studied urban mythology. Focusing on downtown Baku, she ascertained which patterns and developments were typical of and desirable for demonstrations in “hotspots” and how these demonstrations were connected to the social and symbolic structures of the (un)changing city.

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Photographer and director Alisher Primkulov is a member of the Union of Cinematographers of the CIS and Baltic countries. He is a Producer / Creative Director for the communications agency “ArtAREA.”

During his residency, Alisher created a series of video and photo works about Bukhara’s residents and sacred places, conducted masterclasses, and gave a presentation. The artist worked with the Bukharan Gypsy (Jughi) community and the Bukharan Jewish community.

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Yuliya Sorokina is a writer, a lecturer at the T. K. Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts, the director of the Asia Art+ Public Foundation, and an independent contemporary art curator. She holds a PhD in Film Studies.

During her residency, Sorokina studied the state of contemporary art in the region, wrote an essay about local artists, prepared materials for the digital archive of Central Asia, and lead workshops on contemporary art careers and archiving contemporary art.

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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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Muralist and street art advocate Dima Fatum and curator Maria Uvarova work as an artist collective. They have participated in international street art festivals, murals and public art projects, and residences. Their site-specific works incorporate the historical and philosophical contexts of the city.

During their residency, Fatum and Uvarova created a mural based on the history and mythopoetics of the city. The project was preceded by an extensive preparation stage as they collected and analyzed information about Tashkent and its cultural codes.

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Maria Vilkovisky is an artist, curator, and poet. She has been curating art shows and contemporary art–related educational programs since 2011. Since 2013, she and Ruthie Jenrbekova run the imaginary Creolex Center.

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Photographer Eltaj Zeynalov is actively engaged in social issues and works with people with special physical and mental needs. His work draws attention to the difficulties of how people perceive each another. Zeylanov’s photographs have received several awards in Azerbaijan and abroad, and his works are in private as well as public and corporate collections.

During his residency, Zeynalov worked on a photo project that addressed problems of physical and mental disability.

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