Sasha Shestakova

Sasha Shestakova is an interdisciplinary researcher. Their work is deeply informed by their position as a queer person from Russia and long-term personal and professional connections to the Indigenous and decolonial movements, working against Russian colonialism, and the feminist and queer initiatives in the heterogenous Post-Soviet space. These experiences inform their commitment to imagining otherwise through writing, pedagogy, editorial and curatorial work. Their texts have been published in Journal of Visual Culture, Parse Journal, the European Review, Kajet Journal and other media. They have presented their work at nGBK Berlin, transmediale art and digital culture festival, Berlin, Goldsmiths University of London, the University of Amsterdam and La Biennale Architectura, Venice. Seeking to develop translocal and transcontextual solidarities, they have co-curated panels and events at the New School ( New York, USA) 180 Strand (London, UK) and the University of Michigan( Michigan, USA). Their most recent curatorial project – the symposium “Decolonising Russian War on Ukraine” (180 Strand, London) positioned the current russian invasion in Ukraine within the long history of russian colonial violence and positioned Ukrainian and Chechen decolonial resistances within decolonial geographies. They are currently working on a special issue of “Cultural Politics” journal (Duke University Press) “Infrastructural Decolonisation of (Post)Soviet Space”, which combines artistic and academic perspectives on the infrastructures of colonial oppression and decolonial resistance in the heterogenous Post-Soviet space.