Uzbek artist Vyacheslav Akhunov introduces Uzbek contemporary art to local audiences.  Exhibition of Vyacheslav’s graphic and video work opened at Luda Gallery on February 10, 2014. He also participated in a discussion with Russian curator and specialist in Central Asian contemporary art Victor Misiano on February 12, 2015.

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Embracing ideas of consumption, gender, love, power, protest culture, experience of war, plants and dogs, Alevtina Kakhidze is co-founder of a residency program for international artists in the village of Muzychi, The Muzychi Expanded History Project.

To raise awareness of climate change and more sustainable living in the era of global shifts in society, especially in post-pandemic times, she has initiated the laboratory Adult Garden to observe coexistence and the dynamics of plants freed from the gardener’s intervention.

During her ArtsLink International Fellowship 2020 (virtual and in-person residencies), Alevtina and her US collaborators embarked on a garden-focused project that centers on critical observation of organized experimental gardens and natural conservation areas. The artists and scientists from University of Kansas studied the competition and collaboration observable among plants and between plants and living organisms such as insects and birds.  Studies focused on the interaction between native and non-native (including invasive) plants, and explored the cases when a plant native to the US became invasive in Ukraine and vice versa. Alevtina also studied traditional Native American practices of gardening and medicinal plant use.

In Alevtina’s third year of ArtsLink International Fellowship in 2022, she is planning a collaboration with the Kansas University School of Visual Art on the project ‘Fate of Plants’. She will continue to research stable systems – prairies in Kansas, a steppe in Ukraine and the restored plant systems on the edge of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – to generate new work, a series of texts for art and scientific publications and an online discussion. The project has been postponed until the end of war in Ukraine.

The artist profile in the Burlington Contemporary magazine, July 27, 2022
“With the Russian invasion in February 2022, Kakhidze’s art became more radical. Her critique of the war continues to be enacted through a personal lens, however her anti-colonialist narratives are more explicit and her reference points are wider, articulating the violence and imminent danger that characterize life for so many in Ukraine.” (Svitlana Biedarieva, Burlington Contemporary, July 27, 2022)

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Tom Pearson works primarily in visual and written media. His work draws from psychology, archetypal studies, and deep dream practices as well as the medicinal and ceremonial traditions of his native Tsalagi (Eastern Band Cherokee) heritage. He is best known for his movement-based theater works as the co-founder/co-artistic director of Third Rail Projects and the director of the Global Performance Studio.

Pearson’s residency project built on existing relationships with local artists interested in immersive experience with film and installations. In collaboration with fellow artist Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, he focused on a project called Libraria, a modular film/installation/immersive performance collaboration with local performers that was developed through creative workshops with community members. The resulting performance was premiered during the Art Prospect Festival in Fall 2018.

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