Welcome Sasha Artamonova!

We are honored to welcome DAAD scholarship holder Sasha Artamonova to the Institute!

Artamonova is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University and École des hautes études en sciences sociales (cotutelle) and a scholar of modern and contemporary African-American and African Diaspora art. Her dissertation, “The Art of Socialist ‘Friendship’ during the Cold War: Black Artists’ Encounters with the Eastern Bloc, 1950 to 1979” examines the aesthetic forms and artistic practices of Black artists who were involved in cultural relations with the Eastern Bloc within its broader policy of “socialist friendship.” As a recipient of the DAAD One-Year Research Grant, Sasha will spend the 2023-24 academic year in Dresden and Berlin conducting research for the part of her dissertation that examines how the GDR shaped its cultural policy within the project of “socialist friendship,” both independently and under the supervision of the Soviet Union, and extended it towards Black artists from the US and Africa. She will particularly look into the cooperation between the GDR and Black American artists such as Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, and will examine the previously unstudied international institute for journalism “Schule der Solidarität” in East Berlin, where journalists and photographers from decolonizing African and Asian states studied from 1963 to 1989.

She will be in close contact with the team of the research project "Affektive Archive – Auslandsreisen von Künstler:innen zur Zeit der DDR" (Affective Archives – Artists' Travels Abroad during the GDR) at our institute.