About

ARTIST

RUFINA BAZLOVA is a Prague-based Belarusian artist who works in illustration, comics, art books, puppet making, scenography, performance, and costume design. Bazlova gained an international profile for her series The History of Belarusian Vyzhyvanka, which uses the traditional folk embroidery medium to depict the ongoing peaceful protests in Belarus, her home country. Additionally, the artist is also known as the author of the fully embroidered comic book Ženokol (Feminnature), which explores the themes of feminism present in folk traditions. Another of her graphic series, Sametová Plzeň 1989, depicts the events of the Velvet Revolution e in the Czech town of Plzeň. Bazlova holds an undergraduate degree in stage design from the theater department of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) and an MFA in illustration and graphic design from the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia. Together with her colleagues from DAMU, she founded a creative group of puppeteers called Sleď Pod Kožichem (Herring Under a Fur Coat). Their play RAW was nominated for the Greenhorn Award at the prestigious Figura Theatre Festival in Baden, Switzerland in 2020.

CURATOR

SASHA RAZOR is a Belarusian-American scholar and activist. She is a recent alumna of the UCLA Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies where she completed her PhD titled “‘We Were the River’: Screenwriters of the Left Front of the Arts, 1923–1931” in June 2020. Razor is also an expert on Belarusian and Ukrainian literature and culture with a focus on the contemporary period, postcolonialism, visual arts, and diasporic and women studies. In fall 2020, Razor completed an internship at the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco for which she has received the 2020 ASEEES Internship Grant Award. She is the curator of the following exhibitions: Dream of the Revolution (UCLA, 2017), Exiles, Protesters, Envoys: Russian History in Photographs (City of West Hollywood, 2019), and The History of Belarusian Vyzhyvanka: the Protest Art of Rufina Bazlova (UCLA, 2021).

UCLA Young Research Library staff provided event organizing, publicity, and technical support.

Alena Aissing – Librarian and Curator for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Alice Hunt – Library Assistant, Slavic, East European, and Pacific Studies
Gissel Rios – Library Assistant, Western Europe and Outreach Coordinator
Suzy Lee – Manager of Library Public Programs
Benjamin Alkaly – Communication Manager
Julia Tanenbaum – Library Research Student Reference Assistant
Syann Lunsford – Library Research Student Reference Assistant
Nick Schwieterman – Research and Instructional Technology Consultant, Humanities Technology
Jennifer Osorio – Head International and Area Studies, and Director of Special Collections

With additional thanks to

Roman Koropeckyj – Professor of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures
Ronald Vroon – Professor/Chair of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures
Susan Kresin – Senior Lecturer/UCLA Russian Flagship Program Student Coordinator
Anna Kudyma – Senior Lecturer/UCLA Russian Flagship Academic Coordinator
Ali Kinsella – Editor