As we are approaching the third month of physical distancing with some vital experiences on hold, we are confronted with the ‘impossibility of postponed thinking’ about the meaningful processes in life that used to define us. Please join artists Margarita Gluzberg and Maria Kapajeva, curators Sasha Galitzine and Elena Sudakova to reflect on how the present is affecting individual creatives and their practice, the alternative futures we are facing together as an art community, and whether this crisis will serve as a catalyst to redefine existing ecosystems for artists, art professionals and audiences alike.
Organised by Grad in collaboration with Pushkin House.
Please join us live on Zoom on Tuesday May 19th from 5:00 pm (BST)
Join Zoom Meeting — Meeting ID: 815 1346 5821
The event is free, but please consider a donation of £5. All donations will go towards Pushkin House Online to continue its exciting programme of live conversations.
About the participants:
Sasha Galitzine is an independent curator based in London. Galitzine is particularly interested in engaging with local communities and working with spaces not previously designated for the experience of art to try and reach new and more diverse audiences. She has independently organised and produced exhibitions in unusual sites across London; over the last six months Galitzine has led the campaign to save 'Gerry's Pompeii', a total work of art created by the late and self proclaimed 'gardener' Gerry Dalton in his social housing flat, garden and along the Grand Union canal. During the lock-down she has co-founded Quarantine Arts with Paul Nesbitt to encourage imaginations to further open conversations and creativity during this time.
Born in Moscow, Margarita Gluzberg has lived in London since 1979. She studied at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford and the Royal College of Art. Over the last two decades, her work has been presented at major contemporary art spaces that include the MAC/VAL, Paris; CAC, Vilnius; Rooseum, Malmö; KAdE Kunsthal, The Netherlands; British School, Rome (where she was a Wingate Scholar); Drawing Room,London; and Site Gallery, Sheffield. In 2016 her Wellcome Trust project ‘Rock On Bones’, a series of multi-media Performance Lectures, was staged at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill; Performance Studio, London; and the Royal College of Art. Her most recent solo exhibition In Paradise took place at Pushkin House, London, in 2019. Gluzberg has had an extensive teaching career – she was appointed Reader in Contemporary Visual Production at the Royal College of Art in 2014, and became Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy Schools in 2018.
Maria Kapajeva is an Estonian artist based in London. She studied at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham and the University of Westminster, London. Trained as a photographer, Kapajeva works with collage as well as found and archival images to re-examine personal stories, public memories and issues of gender inequality through the history of Soviet (post)colonialism. She has exhibited internationally, including most recently at the Latvian Museum of Photography (2019), CBS Digital Art Space (Denmark, 2019), RIBOCA Biennial (Latvia, 2018), Kaunas Photography Gallery (Lithuania, 2018). In 2016 Kapajeva received a Gasworks & Triangle Network Fellowship to work at the Kooshk Residency in Tehran. Kapajeva’s first artist book, You can call him another man, published by Kaunas Photography Gallery, was shortlisted for the Aperture Photobook Award 2018. Kapajeva is a part of Fast Forward: Women in Photography project which pioneers women in photography.
Elena Sudakova is a curator and cultural entrepreneur based in London. She studied at MSU, Moscow, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Sudakova is a founder and director of Grad, a not-for-profit art organisation which has been operating in London since 2013 as a Kunsthalle, a platform and a forum for debate. Best known for premiering historical and archival materials from the Russian cultural institutions in London, Sudakova has commissioned full scale installations in London by leading contemporary artists such as Olga Chernysheva, Irina Korina, Zhanna Kadyrova and many others. Sudakova is a co-founder of ShadowMemory - an experimental art platform that acts as a multidisciplinary art exhibition interacting within both digital and physical spaces, for free, 24/7.