Our partner The Calvert Journal selects every year five artists to join our platform. We are delighted to introduce the new talents nominated by them in 2020. They are: Andrii Dostliev & Lia Dostlieva, George Stamenov, Kacper Szalecki, Olga Shurygina and Sasha Chaika.
These artists are joining our programme this year, which includes a series of activities offline and online, such as tutoring sessions, showcasing, and takeovers.
Meet the talents from The Calvert Journal:
Andrii Dostliev & Lia Dostlieva
Andrii Dostliev & Lia Dostlieva are both from Ukraine and have been working together in some artistic projects, such as the ongoing 'Licking War Wounds' in the picture.
Lia is an artist, cultural anthropologist and essayist. Her primary areas of my research include the issues of trauma, postmemory, commemorative practices, and agency and visibility of vulnerable groups. As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, interventions into urban space, etc. since 2012.
Andrii studied at the School of Form (Poland) and the Donetsk National Technical University (Ukraine). His work has been exhibited in different countries, such as Ukraine, Germany and the UK. Last year, he was awarded at the II Biennale of Young Art, in Kharkiv.
George Stamenov
Bulgarian artist and director George Stamenov examines the immersive possibilities of storytelling by challenging the dogmas of contemporary film making. His short films carry a unique aesthetic that is derived from Eastern Europe.
Raised in Sofia, Bulgaria and trained as a painter from an early age, his work arises from an early fascination with the Renaissance and Medieval eras. Stamenov utilizes computer graphic imagery as his primary medium, often to render the uncanny side of a simple event or a movement in a composition, exaggerating its insignificance in an extraordinary manner.
Kacper Szalecki
Kacper Szalecki is a visual artist working in photography, video, installation art performance. He is also interested in curatorial and collective practices. He debuted in 2016 during Photomonth Krakow Festival with the project Olympias Diary. Between 2015 and 2016 with painter Sasa Lubińska set up an artist run space Pracownia Mokra (Wet Studio). Kacper is also co-founder and part of the art collective Dom Mody Limanka (Fashion House Limanka).
Olga Shurygina
Olga Shurygina was born in 1987 in Russia. She is a multimedia artist creating her projects in Uzbekistan, her mother’s homeland. She graduated from Moscow Industrial Art Institute in 2013. In her works, Olga uses a variety of media - from subject art, installations, and performance to social research and cinema. She addresses the topic of her female genealogy: both her grandmother and mother came from Uzbekistan. Olga treats this country as a timeless space, a portal where she finds answers to questions.
Sasha Chaika
Sasha Chaika is an artist currently living in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Sciences at the St. Petersburg State University (Smolny) in 2017 and today works as an art and fashion freelance photographer and art-director. Also Sasha makes films and music. Collaborating with such magazines like DAZED, Vice, 032c, L'Officiel, Refigural, Bad To The Bone, Gruppe.