I am filmmaker, media artist, and visual anthropologist specializing in printmaking, watermedia, book arts, filmmaking, and experimental media. I received my PhD in anthropology at The University of British Columbia in 2019.
My training as a filmmaker resulted in two acclaimed feature films, Turning Back the Waves (2010), based on seven women intellectuals in the Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and The Theory of Happiness (2014), in which I became a participant in a radical Ukrainian sect trying to discover happiness through mathematical formulas, and which was nominated for Best Canadian documentary at the Hot Docs International Film Festival (2014).
I have since expanded my practice to encompass multimedia work, and have since toured with a mobile, interactive installation, Still Life with a Suitcase (2017-2019), where audience members were able to decide the narrative flow of the work by manipulating smart objects. As a visual artist, I have worked and exhibited in relief printmaking, watercolours, and bookmaking. I am currently developing an augmented book project focused on the material culture of transnational Russian migrants in New York, Paris, and Berlin. I usually find myself between Toronto, Canada and Berlin, Germany, although I am currently situated in Norway.
Planning a short workshop on virtual, interactive, and remote filmmaking during the coronavirus crisis.
Conducted a short seminar course on visual anthropology to graduate students in the MA Visual Anthropology program at the Freie Universität, Berlin.