A performance, installation and video artist, Raluca Croitoru develops her work in close collaboration with artists and communities. She is interested in collective embodied memory and social modes of performance, exploring leisure and pleasure, consumption and labor, and protest and power. Raluca’s recent projects investigate the relationship between choreopolitics and choreopolicing, terms coined by performance theorist André Lepecki that discuss the relationship between freedom and obedience. She is inspired by the everyday social choreographies of industrial rhythms, activism, ergonomics, flexibility and the mobility of workers.

During her residency, Raluca lead a series of workshops to develop material for a new performance work inspired by the everyday movement of individuals from local communities in work, leisure and conflict contexts.

Curator and author, Adela Demetja is the founder of Tirana Art Lab (TAL) – a leading independent contemporary art institution that engages in a wide range of collaborative activities with art institutions and academic structures in Albania and South Eastern Europe. TAL promotes emerging artists through the programming of public events, residencies, exhibitions and lectures.

Alongside her work with TAL, Adela has curated and managed numerous international exhibitions and events in Europe. In 2015 she was a co-curator of the 3rd Project Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 Ark Underground and in 2016 she was appointed curator of Focus: Ex-Yugoslavia and Albania at viennacontemporary international art fair in Austria. She was also Artistic Director of the Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival.

During her residency in the US, Adela intended to gain familiarity with administration, fundraising, and the strategic development aspects of US arts organizations. She was also eager to meet artists, curators and arts professionals for future collaborations.

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A digital media artist and documentary filmmaker, Anna Dziapshipa explores identity, borders, personal and collective memory and notions of home through digital storytelling. She is a founder of the Abkhazian Virtual Archive – a web portal, reconstructing documents from the State Archive in Sokhumi, Abkhazia, that were destroyed during the armed conflict in the early 1990s.

Anna also founded the documentary film company Sakdoc Film supporting documentary filmmaking that reflects on processes currently taking place in Georgia’s post-Soviet transition. She contributes to the online multimedia platform Chai Khana giving voice to under-represented women, rural communities, minority groups, and conflict-affected communities in the Caucasus.

During her residency in the US, Anna planned to take advantage of the distance from the stories of her home country and explore new angles of communication through collaborations with local artists and communities.

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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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Using light as the central medium in her work, Karolina Halatek creates experiential site-specific spaces that incorporate visual, architectural and sculptural elements. Seeing her work primarily as a catalyst for experience, Karolina creates installations that have strong experiential and immersive characteristics, often the result of collaborations with quantum physicists, and precision mechanical engineers. In 2015 her Scanner Room Video was broadcast into outer space at the Museum of Old and New Art FOMA Festival in Hobart, Tasmania.

Karolina is interested in experiences that extend to the edge of human knowledge, seeking a visual language to evoke feelings and emotions of virtually unknown phenomena.

During her residency, Karolina wanted to collaborate with arts professionals and community members and develop a new body of work based on extensive interviews that reflect on extraordinary experiences of perception. 

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Viacheslav Ivaschenko is chief curator at Living City, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Public Organization for the Development of the Urban Environment. This citizens’ association promotes principles of sustainable development and brings together art curators, designers, architects and sociologists. Inspired by the idea of cultivating a safe and eco-friendly urban environment, Living City runs creative projects in close cooperation with the local communities.

In 2016, Viacheslav produced the first International Recycle Art Festival in Krasnoyarsk featuring the work of international and local artists, eco-activists and city residents. In 2017, he co-organized Recycling Landscape – a public art project in collaboration with the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

During his residency in the US, Viacheslav was eager to observe organizations employing ecological practices in their work, and to meet eco-activists and artists working with recyclable materials.

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A visual, video, and installation artist, Asel Kadyrkhanova explores the fields of memory, trauma, and aesthetics by combining art practice with histories of art and cultural theory. She creates fascinating bodies of work employing the moving image, photography, sound, and embroidery. Asel holds a PhD from the University of Leeds. Her practice-led research focuses on memory, trauma, language, post-Soviet, and postcolonial.

Asel is especially interested in memory as a culturally produced construct, and in trauma as im-memory whose traces can persist in societies with traumatic pasts. Through her art, she seeks to touch upon recollection of  historical traumas in Kazakhstan, such as the famine of the 1930-s, and total ethnic deportations. She is also interested in observing current metamorphoses in collective memory of the Soviet past, resulting in denials, nationalisms or nostalgia.

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Inga Lāce is a curator at the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (LCCA) – the country’s largest institution of contemporary art that curates and produces local and international events. Focusing on topics like forced migration, inner colonization and gentrification, Inga is developing the project Portable Landscapes that examines the stories of exiled and émigré Latvian artists. Inga is also involved in the SURVIVAL KIT – the annual Riga contemporary art festival founded in 2009. Established as a reaction to 2008’s economic crisis, the festival invites artists and audiences to respond to every day changes and reflect on various survival strategies.

During her residency in the US, Inga anticipated tracing the Latvian and Baltic diasporic artists and examining the topic of migration from their prospective. She also explored the contemporary situation of resistance and hostility towards migration and the growing nationalistic tendencies.

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Bozhena Pelenska is Director of the Jam Factory Art Center, a new multi-disciplinary contemporary art center in a former industrial building in Lviv, Ukraine. Bozhena is responsible for the Art Center’s development strategy, program development, management, and institutional development. She developed the concept and program activities of the Art Center. Bozhena studied Cultural Studies, Art History, Philosophy and Art Management. She has participated in international programs of cultural management, cultural diplomacy and exchange programs. A graduate of the University of Lviv and the University of Ottawa with a degree in Cultural Studies, Bozhena is currently a graduate student at the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, University of Maryland.

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Photographer, make-up artist, and activist Filip Rađenović finds the central component of his work in the queer community, subcultures, and notions of freedom of expression. The critical foundation for his photographic work lies in his passion for activism and community interactions. Inspired by an intense commitment to empower marginalized communities, Filip finds his heroines and heroes in people who are willing to stand up for the nature of their truth, identity, and choices, often directly challenging mainstream culture.

Drawing on ancient myths and stories, Filip carefully develops his subjects in collaboration with a specific individual long before assuming his stance in front of the camera. Alongside his artwork, Filip teaches photography, design, and art theory to young students.

Filip planned to use his time in the U.S. to learn more about gender identity, queer history and the LGBTQ communities, and to work on projects relating to human rights and the issues faced by marginalized communities.

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