Bio
"My entire biography is an ongoing hymn to multiculturalism with breaks for wars. You are at home among strangers and a stranger at home, which gives you two important advantages: the ability to see the unobvious and combine the incompatible — in work, in personal life, and in food."
Cultural studies scholar, performance art curator, translator, and lecturer at the British Higher School of Art and Design and Lomonosov Moscow State University.
I was born in Yerevan, Armenia, grew up in Moscow, lived and studied in Spain and the USA. I earned my MA with honors in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication (2011) and PhD in Culture Studies from Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU, 2016). It was a long journey. Meanwhile, as a Fulbright Scholar I was privileged to conduct my own research at Columbia University, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and MoMA Research Center in New York as well as to work with the personal archive of Marina Abramović. My intense academic and artistic experience turned me into the author of the first book on Performance art in Russia Perception of Performance art. Marina Abramovic is present (2019). Since 2011, I have been sharing my expertise through numerous articles, reports, and lecture courses in Russian, English, Spanish, and Armenian.
One of my guiding professional principals is the coherent development and presentation of performative art forms. I elaborated a unique performance art program for the Moscow School of Contemporary Art and curated five large-scale live art student exhibitions at the British Higher School of Art and Design, which made a great contribution to the local cultural and artistic environment.
Just as my diverse background, my career is not limited to performance studies. In 2017, I became a senior lecturer in the Spanish department at MSU and designed innovative courses on Spanish language, Literary translation, Contemporary Art History, Female artists of Latin America, Humanitarian changes, etc. I taught more than 200 undergraduate and graduate students using blended learning, an interdisciplinary approach, and guided discovery methods. I received two academic awards for contribution to the development of MSU (2018,2019) and the Literary award for Small Prose named after A. Platonov (2011).
Selected curatorial projects and Public talks
2022 - Tales for Tomorrow art exhibiton, Moscow School of Contemporary Art
(cutator)
2022 – Performance between law and art. (Round table, Faculty of Law, MSU)
2021 - Marina Abramovic i njena deca lecture at Garage Museum of Contemporary art/ The Art Newspaper Film Festival
2021 – Performance art and Civil Society, the Loft center in Yerevan, Armenia
2021 – The Needs performance art exhibition, Moscow School of Contemporary Art (curator)
2021 - Performance art and the language of silence (Conference on communication in intercultural reality at Lomonosov Moscow State University)
2021 – Performance art and national identity (public lecture at Lomonosov Moscow State university)
2020 – Performance: the boundaries of art and consciousness, Artlife International Festival, Moscow
2020 – Public Talk on performance art and live, the Loft center in Yerevan, Armenia
2020 – Being-Abandoned performance art exhibition, Moscow School of Contemporary Art (curator)
2020 - Public Talk on the book, performance art and Marina Abramovic at Garage Museum of Contemporary art.
2019 - Artist and the city (lecture at Art History State Institute in Moscow)
2018 – Reaching Beyond performance art exhibition, British School of Art and Design in Moscow (curator)
2017- Books and Arts bookshop, Boston, USA (lecture)
2017 - Mirzoyan Library, Yerevan, Armenia (lecture)
2017 - Conference on Armenian post-soviet cinema, Armenian International Film festival (participant)
2016 - National Center of Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow, Russia (guest lecturer)
2016 - Yerevan Modern Art Museum, Armenia (lecture)
2015 - “24” long durational performance art work, Solyanka VPA gallery, Moscow (participant)
2013 - “I need you back. Consequence of thinking” performance, Tisch School of Arts, NYC (artist)
Selected publications
1. Perception of Performance art. Marina Abramovic is Present. KDU publishing House/ ISBN 978 - 5 - 91304 - 887 – 5, 270p. 2019
2. “Modus operadi”: origins of performance art visual language.
Moscow University Young Researches Journal/ISSN 2307-3064. Vol 4, 2015.
3. Performance as an act of communication: receptive method of Marina Abramovic.
VPGU academic journal. Vol 3:267-70, 2015.
4. “ Performance art” in Russian and English-speaking culture. Lomonosov Moscow State University Academic Journal. Vol 19:1:128-34, 2015
5. Visual language of Old Russian God´s fools and modern performance artists. Izvestiya VGPU. Vol 8:93:62-65, 2014.
6. Usage of the term Performance art in modern culture. Moscow University Young Researches Journal/ISSN 2307-3064. Vol 3, 2013.
7. Marina Abramovic: phenomenon of performance artist in modern society. Fatyushinskie chteniya conference collection. Vol 7, 296-303, 2012
8. Performance art in Russian and Western culture. Russia and Western world: dialogue of cultures. Vol 16:1:24-30
Selected courses
Regional Studies in Latin America
Political translation: text and context
Speaking practice in foreign languages
Spanish in Arts
Female Artists in Latin America
Culture studies
Visualization of war
Dissidents and artistic expression
Performance art Basics
Performative media in XXI century
Grand Dames of Performance art
Body art and science
Artisictic gesture and Social response
Time, Context and Energy
Live art and gender
Public and Artist
Visualization of alternative culture
Long durational art
Conference presentations
Terminology of technogenic art of the XXI century (Lomonosov Readings, 2022)
Performance: Between Law and Art (MSU, March 28, 2022)
Performance Art: The Language of Silence and Static (Communicative modes (codes) in the intercultural space, 2022)
Performance Art and National Identity (XXII International Scientific Conference "Russia and the West: Dialogue of Cultures", 2021)
Spanish Language and Arts (Philosophy. Philology. Culture. XXI century, 2020)
Performance: the boundaries of art and consciousness (international festival ARTLIFE, 2020)
"The Artist and Actionism: A Conversation with the City" (International scientific conference "Culture of big cities and agglomerations, Moscow, 2019)
Colombia and Russia: talking about art. (International Scientific-Practical Conference "Language and Culture of Colombia in the National Archives", 2019)
Contemporary Art of the Basque Country: Ethnic Identity and International Context ("Lomonosov Readings, 2019)
Hispanic culture today: variation, improvisation, provocation. (Interfaculty educational and practical forum "Philosophy. Philology. Culture. XXI century", 2018)
European avant-garde of the 1970s: the man in the museum (XX International Conference "Russia and the West: Dialogue of Cultures", 2018)
Spanish Avant-Garde of the 1960s: Music and Performance by Zaj (Lomonosov readings, 2018)
Body as text, material, manifesto (The Follow Art project, 2018)
Performance art. What are we talking about? (British School of Art and Design, 2017)
Performance as an alternative (Yasnaya Polyana public lecturing, 2017)
"Time is night": performances of twenty-four hours.International Conference "Art as Night Media" of the State Institute of Art Studies in Russia, 2017)