Solidarity with Ukraine: Part I

Anna Chistoserdova was the Art Director of the Podzemka Gallery from 2004 until 2009, when she co-founded the highly respected ЎGallery of Contemporary Art in Minsk. She currently serves as Ў Gallery’s Art Director and manages a variety of international art projects and educational programs. Chistoserdova received the European Diploma on Cultural Project Management and Cultural Policy from the Association Marcel Hicter, Brussels, in 2014 and currently serves on the advisory committees of the Eastern Partnership Culture Programme, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Platform for Culture, and the Oracle Cultural Network.

Luba Drozd is an installation artist working with site-specific sound, 3D animation, and sculpture. Her works are composed using vibrations that form sonic spaces alongside sculptural projections. She is the recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Digital and Electronic Arts, MacDowell Fellowship, Yaddo Residency, Millay Colony Residency, Pioneer Works Technology Residency, BRIC Media Arts Fellowship, New Work Grant from Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. Her installations are commissioned and exhibited at such institutions as the Hessel Museum of Art, Knockdown Center, and Bronx Museum of Art. Born in Lviv, Ukraine, she received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Bard College. In 2021, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Award.

A first generation Ukrainian American, Adriana Farmiga is an interdisciplinary artist and Associate Dean at the Cooper Union School of Art in NY, whose practice extends into spaces of: education, curating, and community advocacy. Farmiga received an MFA from Bard College in 2004, and has shown in group and solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Artforum, among other publications, and ranges from conceptual still life to video and mixed media sculpture.

CEC ArtsLink Program Director Susan Katz oversees the Art Prospect Program in public art, social practice art, and professional development in the countries of the former Soviet Union as well as the Back Apartment Arts Residency program. She works closely with a diverse network of international partner organizations, funders, and artists to develop, finance, and coordinate these projects. Susan has a Ph.D. in public administration (cultural policy) from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and wrote her dissertation on the development of nonprofit cultural organizations in Russia.

Artist Yulia Kostereva studied scenography at the Kharkiv State Academy of Arts, graphic design at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. She did postgraduate studies at the Kiev National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. Yulia is a co-organizer of the artistic platform Open Place which aims to deepen creative research and create links between the artistic process and various layers of modern society. She defines art as a space wherein artistic, social and political processes intersect and the purpose of the platform is to distribute a specific form of equality and liberation, broaden the boundaries of art, engage new groups of people in creative processes, and to establish a fruitful dialogue between society and artists.

A gallerist at Structura Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, Marina Slavova is responsible for exhibition policy, residency programs, and international contacts. Structura Gallery functions as an independent space that supports Bulgarian artists, facilitates their access to the world stage, and creates professional contacts between artists from different countries. Marina is active as a curator and host of guided tours and video interviews with artists. In July 2022, she will curate the exhibition of the nominated artists of the BAZA Award, part of the international network of Young Visual Artists Awards, initiated by the Foundation for a Civil Society and realized with the support of Trust for Mutual Understanding and Residency Unlimited, New York.

American philosopher and curator Anton Svyatsky (b. 1991, Moscow) is based in New York. He has worked on, among others, parallel program exhibitions of the Venice Biennale, the Manifesta Biennale, the Bangkok Biennale, and organized various exhibitions at galleries in Europe and the United States. His ongoing exhibition project Quid est veritas? includes artists such as AES+F, Joseph Kosuth, and Simon Denny, among others. He has been a guest lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Savannah College of Art and Design, Indiana University, Moscow School of Contemporary Art, and others. Currently, he holds the position of curatorial director of FALSE FLAG in New York and is also the studio director of the art collective AES+F.

Vladimir Us (b. 1980) is an artist and curator based in Chisinau, Moldova, and the founding member of Oberliht Young Artists Association. He studied art, curating, cultural management and cultural policy in Chisinau, Grenoble and Belgrade. Beginning in 2000, under the umbrella of Oberliht Association, he initiated and is coordinating several cultural platforms in collaboration with artists, architects, curators, activists, researchers and cultural workers from across the region, including [oberlist] mailing list, an information gateway for arts and culture from Moldova; Postbox Magazine - literature, art & attitude; KIOSK AIR, an international artist-in-residence program; and Zpace, and independent arts & culture scene from Moldova.

Artist and designer Lika Volk runs Always Fresh art space in New York and is the curator of The Cultural Capital Introspection program. Since 2019, the program takes place at the “Sorry No Rooms Available” artist residency in hotel Zakarpattia, Uzhhorod, Ukraine. The program invites American artists and curators to produce their works and engage with a conversation about the future of artistic production and cultural institutions through the perspective of their practice. She recently organized a protest at the Guggenheim Museum in New York urging NATO allies to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a dissertation on art, AIDS, and lesbian identity in the United States. Soboleva is currently working on a book project titled Friendship as a Way of Art: Queer Identity and Visual Citation, and co-editing (with Svetlana Kitto) the first major publication on the lesbian gallery Trial Balloon. Her writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Ursula Magazine, as well as various exhibition catalogues and artist monographs. She teaches at the New School and NYU.