Bojana Pejić’ understanding of Eastern Europe transcends ideological pictures of an oppressed and underdeveloped East. She explores its many cultural histories, treating them not as derivative products of Western exemplars, but as heterogenous and specific, and having their own unique importance. In particular, After the Wall and Gender Check were not mere additions to the existing Western discourse but created their own debate and exerted a lasting impact on (historical) writing about global art. Her consistently feminist reading of art from Eastern Europe was never a straightforward application of existing theoretical and methodological models, but rather went beyond a simple narration of the particularities shaped by state socialism and the post-1989 history of the region. What’s more, her writings and exhibitions generate conclusions that are valuable beyond Eastern Europe: they provide lessons on art, society, and power structures relevant to audiences around the world. Her projects are test grounds – full of cross-references – that show rather than assume, and history is never petrified in them. With her work, Bojana Pejić invites us into a never-ending critical process.

The jury is awarding Bojana Pejić for her lifelong research into the constituent elements of Eastern European art and culture. She orchestrated transnational teams or works alone as she surveys what Eastern European countries have in common, and how their art makes visible the history, nationalism, and gender politics of the region. She is responsible not only for the international recognition of many artistic voices, but also for creating critical self-reflection knowledge about our shared history. Her curiosity, opinions, strength, and ongoing self-assessment has made her one of the most respected figures in her field. Virtually all attempts to historicize the art of Eastern Europe make reference to her work, and virtually all discussions on gender construction take place in the context of what she has established and shaped. She has fought many battles while remaining supportive and being a mentor to many.

The jury wishes to praise the type of cultural worker Bojana Pejić represents. She is an opinionated thinker who nevertheless succeeds in uniting many different researchers into a choir of distinct voices. Working mostly as a freelancer, she has created large and insightful projects. She is an art historian and also an activist for whom academia is never sufficient. She compels us to reread our past in order to change our common future.

Bojana Pejić was born in Belgrade in 1948 and graduated in art history from the Faculty of Arts, University of Belgrade (1975). She started to write about contemporary art as early as 1971. From 1977 until 1991, she worked as a curator at the Student Cultural Centre (SKC) of the University of Belgrade. In the 1980s, she was a contributor to Artforum and other international publications. Bojana Pejić has lived in Berlin since 1991. She was the chief curator of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe organized by Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1999), which travelled to Budapest (2000) and Berlin (2000–2001). She was one of the curators working on the exhibition Aspects/Positions: 50 Years of Art in Central Europe 1949–1999 at the MUMOK – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna (2000). She was a chief curator of Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, shown at MUMOK in Vienna and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (2009–2010). She also pursued her research interests in gender representation and power relations in her doctoral dissertation entitled “The Communist Body – An Archaeology of Images: Politics of Representation and Spatialization of Power in the SFR Yugoslavia (1945–1991)”, completing her PhD in 2005 at the Karl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany. More recently she co-curated HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (MOMENTUM Gallery, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, 2016). She is currently a senior non-resident Fellow at New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest (Getty Program) in the context of the seminar “Periodization in the History of Art and its Conundrums: How to Tackle them in East-Central Europe” (2018–2022).

Oksana Briukhovetska is an artist, curator, art writer, graphic designer, and activist. She graduated from the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture in Kyiv in 2003. She explores social themes through the study of personal experience focusing on topics of memory, and social and gender trauma. In her work, she also addresses the issue of Ukrainian labor migration, the impacts of the ongoing military conflict, and the realities of motherhood.

For nearly a decade (2011–19), she worked as a curator at the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv where, together with other female colleagues, she focused on feminist attitudes in Ukrainian art. In her curatorial projects, she confronts the position of women in post-Soviet societies, emphasizing the need to stand up for the rights of women and minorities. Her strong activist attitude informs her curatorial practice – the exhibitions she has (co)curated have a strong, engaged character. Ukrainian Body (2012) tackled topics of corporeality, poverty, and the experiences of marginalized groups in Ukraine, and Lockout (2014) and I am Ukrainka (2018) focused on labor in post-Soviet space and Ukrainian labor migration. Briukhovetska curated and edited catalogues for two powerful feminist exhibitions: Motherhood and What in me is Feminine? (2015), and for TEXTUS: Embroidery, Textile, Feminism and Women’s Texts (2017).

Briukhovetska’s research practice often includes interviews and conversations while also utilizing a range of different media: drawing, painting, textile, writing, public installation, and interventions into urban spaces. The book The Right to Truth: Conversations on Art and Feminism (2019), which she co-edited with Lesia Kulchynska, is a compilation of conversations between female artists and cultural workers about contemporary art and feminism that goes far beyond the feminist discourse centered in Western Europe. It questions the reality of feminist art in the post-Soviet space, particularly in Ukraine and Belarus, while forming alliances with international feminist practices. In recent years, Briukhovetska has lived in the US where she has been researching and writing a new book that aims to present a more critical discussion of race and the anti-racist struggle to a Ukrainian audience.

As most of Briukhovetska’s projects have emerged from collaboration and she is currently far from the Ukrainian scene, the jury hopes that the grant will give her the opportunity to initiate projects with Ukrainian feminists (artists, curators, and activists) while continuing to cultivate international collaborations. It is especially important to support the fragile feminist discourse that is both endangered and at the same time crucial in the context of the war in Ukraine.

Alina Șerbanis is an independent art historian, art writer, curator, and editor. She holds an MA in the history and theory of art from the National University of Art in Bucharest and completed two years of her PhD research at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is currently finishing her PhD at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her research addresses issues of horizontality in postwar Eastern European art and architecture, different regional constructions of conceptualism, and exhibition practices of the 1970s and 1980s. In 2008, she created remarkable monographic exhibitions on Ana Lupaș and Geta Brătescu at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck (in collaboration with Silvia Eiblmayr), and, in 2009, curated the Romanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Recently she curated a landmark exhibition entitled 24 Arguments: Early Encounters in Romanian Neo-avant-garde 1969–1971 at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest (2019). She also (co)curated a series of exhibitions that offered introspection on the complex interrelations between art, architecture, collective culture, and the dynamic of public spaces in Romania during the 1960s and 1970s, and also after the 1990s, among them Enchanting Views: Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s (Sala Dalles, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, 2014).

Alina Șerban’s outstanding curatorial practice often reflects on and polemicizes terminological issues in art historical narratives throughout diverse activities she is developing: symposiums, film screenings, public art commissions, exhibitions, academic presentations, and publishing. Not only does she reposition Romanian cultural figures in the international field, but she has also been influential in internationalizing cultural life in Bucharest. Șerban’s work methods entail a unique combination of curating from both independent and institutional perspectives.

Șerban has accumulated valuable experience founding self-managed organizations over many years, the most recent being IP –The Institute of the Present founded in 2017 in Bucharest (with Ștefania Ferchedău). IP is a research and artist resource platform that has contributed to a major shift in the understanding of visual and performing arts in Romania within the local, regional, and international contexts. Publishing and editorial activities are another important aspect of Șerban’s practice. In 2013, she founded the independent publishing program P+4 Publications in Bucharest. Dedicated to Romanian contemporary photography, art, and architecture, the program explores the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment, and the ideas and subjects tackled by artists in their practice.

With this grant, the jury aims to provide additional support for Alina Șerban to continue the legacy of her work and research as well as to contribute to the continuity of IP.

Antonina Stebur is one of the most engaged and prolific curators and researchers from the younger generation of Belarusians. She graduated in philosophy from the Belarusian State University in Minsk in 2007 and completed her MA in contemporary visual and cultural studies at the European Humanities University in Vilnius in 2009. In 2019, she attended the Chto Delat School of Engaged Art in Saint Petersburg. She is a co-founder of the #damaudobnayavbytu project dealing with gender discrimination in Belarus, and of Spaika.media, a research group dealing with activist art and political performance. She is also a member of the AGITATSIA research group that gathers researchers connected with post-Soviet history and focuses on contemporary Russian art, in particular actionism and political performance. Her writings have been published in Partisan, Moscow Art Magazine, ArtReview, ARTMargins, Block, and other periodicals. She recently co-authored The History of Belarusian Photography (with Anna Samarskaya, 2020). Stebur has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography in Minsk, Moscow, and Kyiv, and was part of the curatorial team for the exhibition Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance at Mistetsky Arsenal in Kyiv that addressed protest movements and solidarity networks in Belarus (2021).

Stebur’s texts, lectures, and curatorial practice not only reflect her research interest in post-Soviet studies and the mechanisms of state violence, politically engaged art, and feminist art, but are also an engaged way of thinking about the spatial and architectural dimensions of protests and exploring the notion of solidarity or “weak” resistance. Her work could be defined by the term engaged fem-criticism. She works individually but also in groups and collectives. The horizontality of her approach and her solidarity-based way of working are noteworthy. In Belarus, she was involved in protests as a cultural worker and also participated in various resistance actions organized by the IT community, which resulted in her forced departure from Belarus in 2021. She went to Kyiv where she cooperated with the Ukrainian art scene on different projects and in particular on the large exhibition Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance that presented the art of protests in Belarus through a cross section of contemporary art constructing and manifesting pulsating forms of interaction, resistance, and collectiveness. In exile in Ukraine, Stebur continued her activities, working on texts, exhibitions, and research, but when the war started in Ukraine, she was forced to flee again. She continues to work on an online platform of cultural workers Antiwarcoalition.art that resists war, dictatorship, and patriarchal power structures by means of art.

The jury is confident that this grant not only recognizes Stebur’s past initiatives, but will also enable her to continue her research, and encourage her insightful writing, curatorial work, and activism in the resistance movement.