Elena Kalkova
ON VIEW: 
FUTURE IS HANDMADE
20 FEBRUARY 2026 -15 FEBRUARY 2027
REGINA  A. QUICK CENTER FOR THE ARTS, CT

Sculpture /Installations
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About Elena Kalkova is an artistic researcher and educator. In her socially engaged practice, through sculptural experimentation, writing, and film collaborations, she explores weaponisations of memorylessness, state propaganda, alternatives to oppressive monumentality, resistance and care, and complex relationships with the home, especially when the home is a dictatorship. Kalkova seeks to connect personal and collective experiences, prioritizing coming together for the collective repair of fractured social ties and fostering horizontal connections.
Read

RECLAIMING HISTORIES:
Russian Queer Art &
Visual Culture

https://publications.risdmuseum.org/grad-show-2021-liberal-arts/elena-kalkova#main-content


Since 2013 Russian Government has been steering towards reviving what they claim to be “traditional Russian values”, which, according to them, include heteronormativity, homophobia, gender binary, religious conservatism, patriarchy and suppression of women rights around childbirth, etc. 

The suffocation of independent media and scholarship, these actions have resulted in a decade’s worth of works by Russian queer artists being abandoned, buried in the archives, museum storages, never exhibited, or hidden under the tag of heterosexuality. 

In this research book that was the result of my MA thesis at Rhode Island School of Design  I looked at the Russian queer cultural production from the Medieval Slavs until the current regime of Vladimir Putin. I argue that our recovery from that forced memory loss is vital for continuing an adequate discussion of Russian art history, which should be informed by feminist and queer discourses.

* all the images in the book belong to their authors, who are cited. The thesis book is not for sale, profit, spread, or further reproduction but only for academic purposes within RISD.