Adela Demetja is a curator born in Tirana, Albania living in Tirana and Frankfurt am Main. She holds a master in “Curatorial and Critical Studies” of Städelschule and Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main. Demetja studied from 2002 to 2006 at Academy of Art in Tirana. She is the director of Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art, which she established in 2010. As an independent curator she has curated numerous international exhibitions and collaborated among others with institutions like National Gallery of Arts Tirana, National Art Gallery of Kosovo, Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art USA, Project Biennale D-0 Ark Underground Konjic, Action Field Kodra Thessaloniki, Lothringer 13 Kunsthalle Munich, Villa Romana Florence, Haus am Lützowplatz Berlin. She curated the Albanian Pavilion at 59th Venice Biennale represented by Lumturi Blloshmi.
Assistant Curators:
Erida Bendo born in 1996 in Kolonjë, Albania, is an architect and computational designer. Always curious about the multi-dimensional aspects of the built environment, from interior spaces to cities, her interests lie in understanding natural phenomena, as the driving force in her explorations of generative design and rule based systems. Erida holds a Masters in Architecture from the Polytechnical University of Tirana and a postgraduate master in advanced computation for architecture and design from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
Jiří Gruber is a Czech intermedia artist and theorist. He studied at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology. He also completed study internship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. His approach is long term multidisciplinary and with an emphasis on collaborative practice. He lives and works between Brno, Tirana and Belgrade.
Anna Karpenko – curator. Born in Minsk (Belarus), lives and works in Leipzig/Berlin (Germany). Graduated from the Philosophy Department (Belarusian State University, Minsk). Has MA in Sociology in Art (European Humanities University, Vilnius). MA student of the Program “Cultures of The Curatorial” (Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig). Focuses on curatorial theory and practice.
Sophia Sadovskaya – educator, curator based in Minsk, Belarus. She studied at the Department of Art History at Moscow State University, worked at the gallery of contemporary Art “Ў” and at the National Art Museum of Belarus. She works with education and mediation in the field of arts, as well as with interdisciplinary projects for environmental activists and artists.
Katarína Klusová received her Bachelor’s degree from the painting studio of FaVU VUT. She achieved her Master’s in Pedagogy from Masaryk University in Brno. Since 2016 she has been the curator at the City Gallery in Třinec. Klusová’s special skill is explaining art to laypeople who meet it for the first time. Thanks to the limited effectiveness of this endeavor, she is now working on developing new methods and guides for popularizing art, inspired by design thinking and sociocracy.
Jolanta Nowaczyk – born in1992 – Prague-based visual artist and cultural worker. Last year she graduated from 7-months WHW Akademija in Zagreb, run by What, How and For Whom? collective. Co-creator of informal initiative Ciocia Czesia which helps Polish people in obtaining legal and safe abortions in Czech Republic.
Kristýna Péčová – born in 1993 – is an art historian and curator. She focuses mainly on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, in which she likes to break down the boundaries between so-called higher and lower, fine and applied arts. She is currently working at the Department of Fine Arts of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and she is preparing the next edition of the International Symposium of Ceramics in Bechyně.
Marianna Placáková – art historian and curator. She studies the gendered context of artistic production in postwar Czechoslovakia. Currently, she is a member of the two-year research project Gender Politics and the Art of European Socialist States (Getty Foundation, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań).
Tereza Porybná, Ph.D. – is a creative producer, visual anthropologist, curator and founder of Ovenecká 33 art and residency space. She has programmed and directed cultural institutions and NGOs in the Czech Republic and abroad, including the One World Human Rights Film Festival, Prague (2002-2006), People in Need, Addis Ababa (2009-2012), and Czech Cultural Centre, London (2013-2019). During her doctoral research, she was a Fulbright fellow at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. As an independent creative producer, she works across visual arts, design, and cultural activism and has organized international exhibitions and events at BOZAR, Victoria and Albert Museum, Cermodern Art Centre, Somerset House, London Design Festival, Kunsthalle Bratislava etc. Since 2019 she has also been managing and co-curating Woods – Community for Cultivation, Theory and Art. She learned how to read tarot cards during lockdown in 2020.
Anežka Rucká – born 1996 – graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Arts Management from the University of Economics and is completing her Master’s degree in Theory and History of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Academy of Arts in Prague. She completed an internship at Syddansk Universitet in Odense, where she worked on performative and conceptual art and their institutionalization. Her research interests include galleries in public space, curating and 20th century artivism. She is the curator of Nika Gallery for 2022. She works in cultural management as a producer and dramaturge.
Eva Skopalová – born in 1991 – studied art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague and the theory and history of contemporary and modern art at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She completed a student exchange at L‘École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, where she was tutored by Georges Didi-Huberman. She focuses on the problem of time in fine art, particularly the perspective of anachronism and its impact on art history. She recently completed a Fulbright scholarship at New York University, where she studied under Alexander Nagel. She is active as a freelance curator and art critic, where her work is based on her research in the methodology of art history.
Daniela Šiandorová – born 1996, Bratislava – studied pedagogy of fine Arts at the Trnava University in Trnava. In 2020, she completed her master’s degree by defending a diploma thesis with the topic Theoretical and Artistic Work of Robert Cyprich in the Context of Time Period. She has worked as a gallery educator at the Slovak National Gallery and Schaubmar’s Mill. After finishing an internship at centre of the contemporary art Meetfactory, she is collaborating on the realisation of the Czech section of the Secondary Archive. She continues to work in Prague as a production manager and conducts research on artists of the unofficial scene of Czechoslovakia.
Kata Balázs – an art historian living in Budapest. She graduated from both departments of Hungarian and Art History studies at ELTE University in Budapest. Since 2007, she has conceived and contributed to numerous publications mainly focusing on avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art, held a teaching position at the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest, the Visart Academy of Arts, the Károly Eszterházy University of Eger, worked at Ludwig Museum Budapest and as a young research fellow at the Art History Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2020, she joined acb ResearchLab as researcher.
Zsófia Farkas – art historian and curator based in Budapest. She received her master’s degree at Eötvös Loránd University, where she is currently pursuing her doctoral studies. She was working as a curator for MODEM Modern and Contemporary Arts Centre in Debrecen between 2012 and 2015. Since 2015 she is the chief curator of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. In 2018 within the framework of the Jewish Museum she founded the Síp12 Gallery and Community Space with the aim of presenting artifacts from the museum’s collection with their possible relations to contemporary art.
Her exhibitions strongly focus on Hungarian women artists of Jewish origin and on autobiographic elements in the oeuvres of contemporary women artists. In her PhD thesis she researches the remembrance of the Holocaust in the oeuvres of women artists.
Fruzsina Kigyós – born in 1988 – a curator based in Budapest with a specialization in contemporary art. She pursued art management and art market studies, then turned towards a theoretical formation with an MA in aesthetics. She has an extensive experience working with commercial galleries, auction houses, museums, magazines and non-profit organizations in Hungary and abroad. She is committed to identifying and developing projects that will challenge the canons of contemporary art in order to reflect more accurately the multitude of voices that artistic creation entails, and to make art history more inclusive in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, geographic and cultural regions. She is the co-founder of Easttopics, a platform and hub dedicated to the contemporary art scene of Central Eastern Europe, and of Flash Show, a debuting art fair focusing on the galleries of the region. She presently acts as the deputy head of the Curatorial Department of the Ferenczy Museum Centre in Szentendre.
Róna Kopeczky – born in 1983 – a curator and art historian based in Budapest. She worked as a curator for international art in Ludwig Museum Budapest between 2006 and 2015, where she mostly focussed on the site- and situation specific practices of young and mid-career artists from the Central Eastern European region. In 2015, she joined acb Gallery in Budapest as artistic director, and also actively contributes to the publishing activity of acb Research Lab, with a focus on forgotten, neglected or ignored oeuvres of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde art. She participated in the organization of the first OFF-Biennále Budapest that took place in 2015 and was member of the curatorial team for its second edition held in Fall 2017. She is the co-founder of Easttopics, a platform and hub dedicated to contemporary art of Central Eastern Europe that is based in Budapest. She is also the curator of the next edition of the Tallinn Print Triennial, scheduled to open in early 2022 in Tallinn, Estonia. She completed her PhD in Art History in 2013 at Sorbonne University.
Fanni Magyar – art historian and art critic based in Budapest. She studied at the Faculty of Art History at ELTE, and also trained in Berlin. She is member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), member of the editorial board of the Hungarian Art Connoisseur. Her focus lies on the neo-avant-garde artistic practices of the sixties and seventies and on the critical theories in contemporary art. Between 2016 – 2019, she acted as board member of the Studio of Young Artist’ Association (SYAA); and is working from 2018 as curator at acb Gallery.
Sára Vilma Nagy – born 1992, is a design and art manager, and graphic designer based in Budapest, currently working as the artistic director of Kisterem gallery. She studied art and design theory and art management at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Köln International School of Design. In the course of her professional activity, she participates in the realisation of projects, exhibitions, and publications in the field of contemporary design and fine art as a project coordinator, communication manager, and curatorial assistant. She took part in the organisation of the first edition of OFF-Biennále Budapest, worked as the design manager of KAZA Concrete between 2016-18, her latest project was the publication of World Game, a book presenting the oeuvre of Ádám Kokesch, of which she was co-editor and designer.
Viktoria Popovics – an art historian and curator based in Budapest. She has been working at the Ludwig Museum – Museum for Contemporary Art Budapest since 2014, where she contributed to several large-scale exhibitions focusing on Central and Eastern European art. (Ludwig Goes Pop – The East Side Story, Permanent Revolution. Ukrainian Art Today, Iparterv 50+, etc.) She has participated in research projects and curatorial residencies in Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Prague and Ljubljana. Since 2012 she is PhD fellow of the Eötvös Loránd University Doctoral Program and from 2020 a member of the Hungarian Section of AICA. Her research interests include Central and Eastern European art, Hungarian neo-avant-garde art and critical theories.
Andrea Soós – holds a master’s degree in design theory from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest and a curatorial degree from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She worked at the Ludwig Museum Budapest, the Hungarian National Gallery and participated in the projects of tranzit.hu Contemporary Art Association. Since 2019, she has been working as a freelance curator, researcher and art writer. Since 2020, she is a PhD student in Design Culture Studies at the Doctoral School of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest.
Mónika Zsikla – Curatorial Director of Q Contemporary Budapest. Between 2003 and 2009, she studied Art History and Aesthetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and from 2015 to 2018, she continued her education in the Aesthetics Programme of the Doctoral School of Philosophy at Eötvös Loránd University, where she is now working on her doctoral thesis. Between 2007 and 2015, she worked at the Kisterem Gallery of Budapest. In parallel with her studies, as an Ernő Kállai scholar, she has conducted extensive research on the life work of Zsigmond Károlyi (as of 2013) and of Gizella Rákóczy (as of 2016). Since 2007, she has regularly published in Hungarian periodicals, as well as in Hungarian and international publications. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, and curator at the Budapest Gallery. In parallel with these activities, she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions of Hungarian contemporary art over the past decade. She is a member of the AICA. Her curated exhibition with the artist Zsófia Keresztes entitled After Dreams: I Dare to Defy The Damage will represent Hungary at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
Renea Begolli is a visual artist, researcher and archivist based in Prishtina, Kosovo. Renea graduated from the Department of Painting at the Faculty of Arts, University of Prishtina. During her Bachelor studies, she spent a semester at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Bournemouth University, England. In 2020, she joined the Oral History Initiative team, where she works as a researcher and archivist. While as an artist, Renea was part of several group art shows and has also had solo exhibitions.
Erëmirë Krasniqi is an art writer, curator and researcher based in Prishtina, Kosovo. Erëmirë received her M.A. from Dartmouth College, and B.A. from Bard College Berlin. Her writing has been published in Kosovo 2.0, Versopolis Review, Kontakt Collection and Artforum. As an independent curator, she has led and curated projects for the National Gallery of Kosovo, National Gallery of Arts in Albania, and 39th EVA International, Limerick, Ireland. She locates her research practice between contemporary art, digital humanities and cultural heritage. Currently, she is the executive director of Oral History Initiative, a digital resource which engages new forms of cultural production, supporting and advocating the essential work of media archives.
Magdalena Adameczek – born in 1993. A polish curator and researcher currently based in Rotterdam, NL. Co-editor in the online journal for contemporary art guestrooms.xyz. Graduated in art history at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Curatorial and Art Theory Studies at the University of the Arts in Poznań. She has been the curator-in-residence at Sandra Gallery; collaborated on Sharon Lockhart’s presentation around the Polish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Art Biennale and assisted in the realization of other projects in U-jazdowski CCA and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews Warsaw. Collaborated with CINNAMON gallery and RIB exhibition space in Rotterdam. Obtained a scholarship in Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Kosovo.
Anna Ciabach – born in 1980. Art historian, exhibition curator, author and editor of texts, organizer of cultural events. She worked in a variety of art-spaces in Warsaw, incl. Klima Bocheńska Gallery, Art NEWmedia and Studio Gallery. Between 2014-2018, together with Zuzanna Sokalska, she co-founded and -managed the Monopol Gallery in Warsaw.
Agata Cieślak – an artist, and writer. Working across range of media and modes of address, drawing curatorial and institutional strategies, she questions the given strategies and tactics in the context of Contemporary Art while searching for the meaning of art and testing the limits of its agency. In her recent works she focuses on the subject of class hegemony and has explored apparatuses of control and sovereignty at work in contemporary art. She often works with others. Despite her many doubts, she still believes in the importance of art today.
www.agata-cieslak.com
Maja Demska – born in 1992. A graphic designer by education, a curator, author of texts and diagrams by profession. A graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań. She is interested in the subject of data visualization in the context of art and media coverage. Initiator of artist-run space Groszowe Sprawy in Warsaw.
Anna Kowalska – born in 1992 – art historian, researcher, author of texts. A graduate of the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw. She gained professional experience in art museums, incl. at the U-jazdowski Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. He has been working in the auction market since 2018 – initially practicing in Christie’s in London, and currently dealing with Polish post-war art at Desa Unicum.
Ewa Mielczarek – born 1992. Curator, culture expert, creator of interdisciplinary projects. A graduate of cultural studies at the Institute of Polish Culture of the University of Warsaw and History of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2016-2018, she worked at the Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw and was the coordinator of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend. Since 2018, an employee of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art and producer of exhibitions at the Polish Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice. Since 2015, she has been running the The Hidden Photo project and the Rozmowwa platform. Curator and producer at RATS Agency.
Karolina Maria Rojek – born in 1982. PhD candidate at the University of Wrocław in the field of art history and a student of psychology at the University of Lower Silesia in Wrocław. In 2009-2010 she studied Spanish philology at the University of Sunderland. A three-time winner of the Mexican Government scholarship. In 2020, she conducted a seven-month research in Peru as part of the PROM scholarship. Her main interests is Latin America, especially in the context of female art practices of this region. She is a curator, photographer and teacher of Spanish.
Joanna Ruszczyk – journalist, curator. Graduated in Polish philology at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and Curatorial Studies in museums at the Jagiellonian University. Collaborates with different magazines, such as “Newsweek Polska”, “Wysokie Obcasy”, “Szum”, “Twórczość”. She is a co-organizer of Sztuczna Foundation, which focuses on popularizing practices of the young generation of artists and education. Co-author of the book “Lokomotywa / IDEOLO” (published by Sztuczna Foundation, Wytwórnia 2013 and Centrala 2015).
Agnieszka Sosnowska, PhD – curator in Muzeum Susch and researcher. She’s interested in art practices at the intersection of disciplines, as well as the exhaustion of the modernist paradigm in the art of the 1960s and 1970s. In 2008-2020 curator at the Ujazdowski Castle CCA in Warsaw. She defended her PhD dissertation in the Institute of Polish Culture (University of Warsaw). Selected curatorial work includes exhibitions ‘Other Dances’, Laura Lima ‘A Room and a Half’, ‘Let’s Dance’ and several performance programs. Author of books: ‘Sztuka znikania’ [The Art Of Disappearance] and ‘Performans oporu’ [Performance of Resistance].
Bogna Stefańska – born in 1991. A graduate of art history studies at the Faculty of Visual Culture Management at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Currently, she works at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw as a guide and curator of a public program. In her research work, she deals with the notion of rewriting the canon of artistic and activist activities against war and fascism, as well as feminist art and on-line activities. She is a co-founder of the HER Docs Film Festival and researcher of the Atlasu Roku Antyfaszystowskiego [Atlas of the Antifascist Year] – a wide, self-organised, social archive of actions and other anti-fascist activities.
Mirjana Dragosavljević is art historian and curator; MA in Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University, Serbia. Publishes in art magazines, publications, online portals. Worked in Grafički kolektiv gallery (2008-2010). Was a member of the curatorial collective Kontekst kolektiv (2010-2013) and the Working group Four Faces of Omarska (2010-2016). Editor and co-editor of publications about contemporary art (“Umetnost je pomembna toda umetnost ni dovolj”, Brina, Belgrade, 2019; “Gde budućnost počinje”, ULUS, Belgrade, 2020; „Symptoms of the future“, Onomatopee, Eindhoven & Out of Sight, Antwerp & Stereovizija, Belgrade, 2021; “Tišina je ovde gluvoća”, Stereovizija, Belgrade, 2022; “Ples, publika, pejzaž”, Station Service for contemporary dance, Belgrade, 2021, etc). Curator of the exhibitions “Art Matters, but Art is Not Enough”, Center for Contemporary Art in Celje, Slovenia (2016); “Silence is deafness here”, Cultural centre of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia (2019); “Silence is deafness here”, Pogon Jedinstvo & 90 60 90 Platform for contemporary art, Zagreb; Croatia; “Imagine” Maja Hodošček, Gallery of Belgrade Youth Center, Belgrade, Serbia; “Where does the future begin?”, ULUS Spring Exhibition at the Art Pavilion Cvijeta Zuzorić, Belgrade, Serbia (2020); “If only the day was longer”, Art55 Gallery, Niš, Serbia (2020); “If only the day was longer”, National museum gallery in Vranje, Serbia (2021); exhibition of Siniša Ilić and Bojan Đorđev “Gathered”, ULUS gallery, Belgrade, Serbia (2022). Together with other members of STATION Service for contemporary dance curates Kondenz festival of contemporary dance and performance (since 2016). Together with Milutin Dapčević, Dušica Dražić, Selena Orb, Vladimir Pejković, Katarina Popović, Tanja Šljivar and Igor Vasiljev was the member of the team of Serbian pavilion titled “Self-upbringing: Scene work ahead” at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, Prague, Czech (curators: Maja Mirković, Bojan Đorđev, Siniša Ilić). Member of editorial board of portal Mašina (since 2014) and member of STATION Service for contemporary dance in Belgrade (since 2016). Has status of independent art historian via Association ULUPUDS. Member of AICA – International Association of Art Critics, Serbia. Currently working at Association Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia in Belgrade, Serbia.
Simona Ognjanović – born in 1982, graduated from the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, where she is currently pursuing her doctoral studies. Since 2010, she has been active as a curator in the field of contemporary art. She worked at the National Museum in Belgrade (2012−2014), within the Association of Curators Alineja, of which she is one of the founders (2015−2018), and since 2017 she has been employed at the Museum of Yugoslavia, where she manages the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. She is the author of numerous texts published in the form of articles, studies or prefaces to exhibition catalogs, as well as a series of public lectures and talks about contemporary artistic practices, among which are Art after crime (Center for Cultural Decontamination, 2020-current, co-author Dejan Vasić) , Alineja’s video course on contemporary art and Alineja’s video course on art theory (Student cultural center, Belgrade, 2016−2018, co-author Stevan Vuković). She is the winner of the award of the Society of Art Historians of Serbia for the best exhibition in 2014 (Piet Mondrian. The Case of Composition – co-author Jelena Dergenc), the NK ICOM Serbia award for the best exhibition in 2019 (The Nineties: Dictionary of Migration – co-author Ana Panić), as well as the Lazar Trifunovićaward for the best article on contemporary visual art in 2019 (article title Dictionary of migration: one possible interpretation of the nineties). She is a member of NK ICOM Serbia and the International Association of Art Critics AICA – Serbia section.
Dejan Vasić – born in 1985, Šabac, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, is an art critic and independent curator based in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2012, Vasić graduated History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. Since 2017, he has been working as a Visual Arts curator at the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) in Belgrade. He is the co-editor of Beton-cultural propaganda kit (2018-) and an active member of the International Association of Art Critics AICA, Section Serbia (2012-). In the past, he was a member of Kontekst Collective (2009-2013), the Culture of Memory curatorial platform (2010-2014), and the Four Faces of Omarska Working Group (2010-2015). His research and curatorial projects were part of public events and exhibitions (selection): Publicness and Space (CZKD, 2021-ongoing); Art After Crime (CZKD, 2020-ongoing, co-curator with Simona Ognjanović); Art as Critics and Politics (CZKD 2017-ongoing); Performance, Performativity and Document (SULUV Galery, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Matica Srpska Gallery, Novi Sad, 2018); Four Faces of Omarska (Dokufest, Prizren 2014; Forensis, HKW, Berlin 2014; October Salon, Belgrade 2013; Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo 2013; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2013; Urban Festival, Zagreb 2012; Center for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2012; Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2010; SpaPort Biennial, Banja Luka, 2010); The Culture of Memory (GPL Contemporary, Vienna 2014; Gallery PM, HDLU Zagreb 2014; Mediterranea 16, Young Artists Biennial, Ancona 2013; Biennial of Visual Arts, Pančevo 2012; Cultural Center, Šabac 2010). His interest focuses on art as a critical and political practice, with the affirmation of critical thinking as a public good.
Jelena Vesić (PhD) – an independent curator, writer, editor, and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice that intertwine political theory and contemporary art. Vesić co-edited Prelom – Journal of Images and Politics (2001–2010, Belgrade) and is co-editor of the journal Red Thread (Istanbul), a member of the editorial board of ARTMargins and advisory board of Mezosfera (Budapest). Vesić curated Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, w. Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art, which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives on Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her recently opened exhibition In Collectivising, Five Stories (Moderna Galeria, Ljubljana) deals with the feminist interventions into the art-historical narration on the 20th century avant-garde art collectives. Vesić’s essay-book, On Neutrality (w. Vladimir Jerić Vlidi and Rachel O’Reilly) is part of the Non-Aligned Modernity edition, MoCA, Belgrade. Vesić is co-editor of the Red Thread #5: Alt-Truths and Insta-Realities: The Psychopolitics of Contemporary Right (w. V.J. Vlidi), co-editor of the book Feminist Takes: Early Works by Želimir Žilnik (w. Antonia Majaca and R. O’Reilly) and co-editor of the book Yugoslav Art Space: Ješa Denegri in First Person (w. Branislav Dimitrijevic), JRP (tbp, Autumn 2022).
Viktória Beličáková – born in 1994. In 2013 – 2019 she studied art history at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague. She completed internships at the Prague City Gallery, Regional Gallery in Liberec, at the Ludwig Museum and Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest, and at the U10 Gallery of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia. In the organization tranzit.cz she worked as a production manager and main coordinator of the first year of the biennial In the matter of art 2020 in Prague. She is currently a doctoral student at the Institute of Art History of Charles University. She is engaged in independent research, writing and cultural work. Thematically, she focuses mainly on feminism, social, participatory and community art. She addresses issues of personal and collective identity, migration and origin, geography, space and narrativity in the context of Eastern Europe. She is interested in everything that is difficult to define and is on the border. She critically re-evaluates the basics of the field of art history, especially seen from marginalized perspectives with regard to her own subjectivity.
Zuzana Kotiková – studied at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague. In 2011, she returned from Prague to her hometown Košice and started working at Tabačka Kulturfabrik. Since 2013, Kotikova has been organizing the Košice Artist in Residence program. The program was established as one of the key development projects for Košice – European Capital of Culture 2013 and since 2016 it has been operating as an independent civic association, which Zuzana founded with curator Petra Housková. In addition, Zuzana and Petra founded the Šopa Gallery in 2015. Zuzana has a long-term cooperation with Creative Industry Košice, where she is involved in an international project focused on the development of culture and the creative industry.
Lujza Kotočová – born in 1995. She studied art history at Charles University in Prague, and during her studies she also completed a research stay at the University of Hamburg. Her main areas of interest include intellectual influences on artistic production in the period of socialism, institutional frameworks of art criticism and the issue of documentation of ephemeral art. She is currently collaborating on the research project Behind the Artwork. Thinking Art Against the Cold War’s Bloc Polarity (principal investigator: Dr. Katalin Cseh-Varga; FWF Austrian Science Fund), while is she externally participating in the activities of the Research Institute of Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and also working in the National Film Archive within the Video Archive section.
Michaela Kučová – born 1988. She specializes in journalism, project management and PR in the field of culture. She has collaborated on projects such as PechaKucha Night Bratislava, Dymová hora, Oskár Čepan Award, White Night and Question of Will. For two years, she led a series of discussions on gender issues in Slovak art at the Art Books Coffee Gallery. Her texts were published in newspapers SME, Denník N, Pravda, and magazines Profile, Artalk or Kapitál. She contributed to the catalogues of Kristína Mésároš or the annual exhibition Take Care organized by Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She is the co-founder of the feminist newsletter Kurník.
Denisa Tomkova – Slovak-born, Berlin-based and UK and US-educated researcher and writer. She gained her PhD from the University of Aberdeen in the UK. Between 2015- 2018, she was a member of the international research project ‘Comparing WE’s. Cosmopolitanism. Emancipation. Postcoloniality’ based at the University of Lisbon. She taught the Introduction to Visual Culture class and was a guest lecturer in the Performance Art Class at the University of Aberdeen. She was a Research Fellow for the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Berlin. In April 2020, she curated an online group exhibition Performing the Museum at ERIAC which questioned the absence of Roma representation in arts and culture spaces. She contributed to journals such as Third Text, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, ARTMargins Online, L’Internationale Online, Camera Austria, Profil – súčasného vytvarného umenia, H- SHERA, Berlin Art Link, Kuba Paris and Magis Iteso.
Miroslava Urbanová – born in1991 – studied art history at the University of Vienna and at Comenius University in Bratislava. Between 2015 and 2019 she worked at the Loft 8 Gallery in Vienna. She currently works as an art historian at the Nedbalka Gallery in Bratislava. She is engaged in curatorial activities and art criticism. She writes and edits for the feminist newsletter Kurník.
Oksana Briukhovetska – born in 1973, lived and has worked in Kyiv, Ukraine. She graduated from National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture in Kyiv in 2003. She worked as an artist, graphic designer and publicist, participated in exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad, and published articles about art. From 2009 till 2019 she worked as a designer and curator at the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv, organizing exhibitions, public events and publishing projects. Some of the early exhibitions that she co-curated – Ukrainian Body (2012) and Lockout (2014) had a significant public resonance. From 2011 she became involved in feminism and from 2015-2017 has organized three international feminist exhibitions: Motherhood; What in me is Feminine? and TEXTUS. Embroidery, Textile, Feminism, which aim was strengthening the voices of women artists within the Ukrainian art scene and in international collaboration. In 2017-2019 she participated in research on feminist art in East Europe and France within Tandem-Ukraine project and ended up with co-editing and publishing a book, collection of interviews: “The Right to Truth. Conversations on Art and Feminism” (VCRC, 2019). In 2018 she was a co-curator of Warsaw Under Construction X festival (collaboration of VCRC and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) where she co-curated the Neighbors exhibition and curated I am Ukrainka poster campaign about Ukrainian women migrant workers in Poland that was widely discussed in the media. In 2020 she came to the United States where she started to work on the book interviewing people in the US about Black Lives Matter protests and race. The book will be published in Choven Publishing House, Ukraine, in 2022. In 2021 she entered the MFA program at Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.
Kateryna Iakovlenko – born in 1989. A contemporary art researcher, art critic and writer. She earned an MA in journalism at the Donetsk National University. For six years she has been researching the transformation of the heroic narrative of Donbas through new media as a postgraduate thesis at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She worked as deputy web editor for The Day newspaper (2013–2014), curator and program manager in the Donbas Studies Research Project at Izolyatsia, a platform for cultural initiatives (2014–2015), and researcher and curator of public programs at PinchukArtCentre (2016–until now). Her current research interest touches on the subject of art during political transformations and war, and explores women’s and gender optics in visual culture. She was the editor of the books Gender Studies by Donbas Studies Research Project (2015), Why There Are Great Women Artists in Ukrainian Art (2019), Euphoria and Fatigue: Ukrainian Art and Society after 2014 (special issue of Obieg magazine, co-edited with Tatiana Kochubinska, 2019), and Curatorial Manual (co-edited with Oleksandra Pogrebnyak and Dmytro Chepurny, 2020).
Iryna Polikarchuk – born in 1989. A culturologist and art historian, she holds an MA in Cultural Studies (2013, National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”). Since 2016 she is a director of Charitable Foundation for Art Support “Artsvit Gallery”; from 2018 she is a co-founder of the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture; since 2022 she is a teacher of the history of modern culture at the Dnipro Art College. She creates and curates the public program of Artsvit Gallery (exhibitions, educational programs, researches, residences, publications), establishes partnerships (national and international), coordinates the work of the team, and is engaged in project management.
Kateryna Rusetska – born in 1989 – is a co-founder and curator of NGO Kultura Medialna and Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture. She focuses on creating project concepts, curatorship, management. Kate holds a BA in journalism and public communications and MA in PR and Marketing. In 2013 she completed an internship with PACE Gallery in Beijing. In 2019 Kateryna completed a fellowship program with ArtsLink International Fellowships in Oberlin College of Liberal Arts and Science, currently, she is an Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen CrossCulture Programm fellow. Kateryna co-leads and curates the following projects and initiatives: Construction Festival, Dnipro Monumentalism.
Alya Segal – an art historian and independent curator. In her practice she works with modern and contemporary Ukrainian art, with representation of women in it, with regional movements and underground collectives. Originally from Kharkiv, Ukraine, now she is based in Kyiv, Ukraine.