Working primarily in moving image, photography and performance, Agil Abdullayev’s practice examines the Caucasian queer identity as it has been shaped by historical, cultural and social backgrounds. He aims to facilitate a dialogue between queer identity and society and address such subjects as femininity and masculinity, public and private life, politics and society, western and eastern cultural standards, and bridging the spaces between these topics. He was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018 and was a recipient of Attic Residency by One Throsby Street in Nottingham, UK.  

Agil’s works have been shown in group and solo exhibitions, including Salaam Cinema, 2019; Photographers Gallery, 2019; Liverpool Biennial, 2018; Primary Contemporary Art Space, 2017; The Wrong – New Digital Art Biennale, 2017; Tate Modern, 2016; Yarat Pavilion at 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, 2012. He graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA in Fine Arts.

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Born in Donetsk, Ukraine, Diana Berg was relocated to liberated Mariupol from her hometown in 2014 due to the war in Eastern Ukraine. In Mariupol she founded the art platform “Tu,” which promotes human rights and freedom through arts and culture. She is a curator and art-manager of numerous Ukrainian art projects.  As an artist, Diana uses public actionism, street theatre, installations and performance to address topics of critical thinking and human freedom, such as inequality, the border between public and private, memory and remembrance, countering stereotypes, and indifference.

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Street art artist Pasha Cas is well known for his far reaching, socialIy acute works addressing societal indifference, corruption, and ecology.  In his work, Pasha uses minimalistic stencil presentation techniques to create street art that is a manifestation of the present reality and strives to challenge the observer to rethink the current world. He is one of only a few street artists, who choose not to hide their face behind a mask, but rather believe that it is important to have an open dialogue with the public. He was awarded the prize for Best Public Art Work in 2018 by the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Awards for his work Happy New Year, Comrades in St. Petersburg, Russia.

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A researcher, artist, and science fiction writer, Anastasia Kizilova began her artistic career in 2001 as a student at the Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Industry. In 2013, she presented the project The Artist’s Uniform, the aim of which was to interact with the participants of the professional art system, and in 2015 she co-organized the horizontal initiative, Flying Cooperation, which unites multi-skilled young artists, who were born in the Post-Soviet space (Belarus, Russia, Ukraine).

Since 2016, Anastasia has been collected an archive of unrealized artists’ ideas entitled Found Project: authors share their ideas for free so that other people who are in need of ideas can realize them. She currently works in the field of environmental communication, focusing on post-humanist and non-humanist ways of interacting by bringing together theoretical approaches such as queer-ecology, cyberfeminism, bio-anarchism, and practical methods such as performative creation of an interspecific collective body.

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Zhazgul Madazimova worked in post-war emergency relief with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Doctors Without Borders and, more recently, has been involved in projects helping labor migrants from Central Asia in Moscow. For the last four years, the focus of her work has been the exploration of the relationship between art and society through the ArtEast group and collaborative projects with other artists in Bishkek.

Zhazgul’s work focuses on gender, migration and contemporary social issues in Central Asia.  She has been involved in art and activist alliances to create a public dialogue through the tools and language of art. Madazimova studied contemporary art practices at the ArtEast School and the Central Asia Cultural Managers’ Academy organized by the Goethe Institute Tashkent-Berlin and International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Central Asia.

Nikita Seleznev works with installations, sculpture, and objects.  During the past few years, he has participated in international group exhibitions, including the Special Project of the 5th Moscow Biennale of Young Art, The Parallel Programme of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, and the 5th Art Prospect Festival. Seleznev’s recent solo exhibition projects in St. Petersburg include:  My Green Crocodile, Navicula Artis; Pets, 2.04 Gallery; My Little Protest, Quartariata residence. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design and the PRO ARTE School for Young Artists.

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Nadezhda Valetskaia is a member of the Nadenka Creative Association established in 2014. This feminist art group of five artists includes Anastasia Makarenko, Maria Rybka, Maria Alexandrova, Alena Isakhanyan, all alumni of the School for Engaged Art “Chto Delat”, St. Petersburg.  She creates textile objects, video art, performances and public art, holds talks and seminars, as well as feminism awareness events and recycling workshops.  Nadezhda is interested in collectivity, sisterhood, art-activism, craftivism, self-education, learning and unlearning, gender studies and other artists.

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