A b o u t
A n y a
G l e i z e r
A r t i s t
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My practice is conducted at an interface between art and science. The first half of my academic career unfolded as a conservation biologist working in Alaska and Siberia. In 2013, I decided to change the way I articulated the boundary between myself and the ecosystems I was studying/participating in; I decided to be an artist, changing my methods but not my study. Since then, I have been interested in the different methodologies that allow one discipline to claim scientific nature and another an artistic one, and the affordances of both. In clarifying the affordances (of the scientific vs. artistic method) we inch closer to understanding our relationships with our “natural” and “socio-cultural” environments, and why we insist on articulating them as separate. At the centre of this questioning, the boundary that allows the nature/culture binary to persist begins to slip. In my art practice, I explore themes of interior and exterior wilderness through performances and installations that question our assumptions about art and science.
Born in Russia, and brought up in New York City, I have travelled extensively for my research, working with indigenous communities across Russia, with genomics labs in the American Museum of Natural History, with film-makers in Japan and with wolves and moose on Lake Superior. I have chased a 17th century haiku poet around the coastlines of Honshu and a 19th century anthropologist up the Yenisei River. I have circumnavigated lake Baikal and monitored arctic shorebirds in Chukotka.
Faced with the dwindling of wilderness and wildness in watersheds, collapsing ecosystems or in our own human minds, I work towards a radical reframing of our relationship to the natural world. My performances search for the ritualistic and the absurd in the everyday repetitions of our normalized socially-constructed madness, in the ethos of roadside BurgerKings, the trappings and tatters of the cities - centers of our chaotic civilizations.
I am the founder of the Art & Ecology platform The Flute & the Bowl whose dual goal is:
To facilitate collaborative projects between the arts, humanities and sciences that would "act as a flute for the natural world," i.e. act as an instrument through which the natural world can communicate itself.
To facilitate collaborative projects between the arts, humanities and sciences that would "act as a bowl for the natural world," i.e. to hold, protect and conserve the natural world, sharing of it sustainably within our More-than-human communities.
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E d u c a t i o n
2018-2019 MFA University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art
2013-2016 BFA University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art
2010-2013 BA Dartmouth College
Awards/Grants
2019 Mansfield-Ruddock Prize
2019 TORCH Heritage Seed Fund Grant (University of Oxford)
2019 Royal Geographic Society Geographical Field Work Grant for filming in Native Siberia
2019 European Cultural Foundation Award
2019 Santander Travel Award for art initiative in Native Siberia (University of Oxford)
2019 Michael Pike Award (University of Oxford)
2019 Culture-ActionS Grant, Le Centre Culturel du Crous de Paris
2019 Paris Sciences et Lettres, AIE Award
2018 Marie de Paris, APIE Award
2018 Erna Plachte Award (University of Oxford)
2016 SSA Invited Graduate Award
2015 Nasu Film Festival Award for short-film; collaboration: Naho Ogawa
2014 Barnson Bequest Award
2012 Stefansson Research Fellowship
2008 Regional Ricoh Sustainable Development Award
2008 Association of Women Geoscientists Student Award
Collections
The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts and Mansfield College Private Collection
Publications
2020 Gleizer, Anya. Сороки в Сибири (Eng: Magpies in Siberia).Tura Ministry of Culture Publishers.
2019 Oku no Kurogawa: Black River to the Deep North. Artist Novel. Culminating result of In Basho’s Footsteps Project.
2013 Gleizer, Anya. “A Superior Adventure.” Woodsmoke Magazine. (2013): 3-24.
2012 Pineda-Catalan, O. et al. “Conservation genetics of harvested river turtles: All roads lead to Iquitos.” Mitochondrial DNA. 23.3 (2012): 230-38. (Co-author).
2006-2010 Artist for environmental science magazine Biosphere.
Selected Residencies
2019 La Ménagerie de Verre Studio Lab, Paris, France.
2019 Centre d’Animation Tour de Dames Movement Residency, Paris, France.
2019 Space Citeaux Residency, Paris, France.
2018 École Normale Supérieur Performance Residency, Paris, France.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2019 Granny's Bones, Mansfield College, Oxford, UK.
2019 Anthropometamorphosis, St. Luke’s Chapel, Oxford, UK.
2019 Anthropometamorphosis, Dolphin Gallery, Oxford, UK.
2017 Mythical Roots: Environmental Storytelling, Tricaud & Pigasse, Paris, France.
2017 Dionysus : Tristeria, Tricaud & Pigasse, 4 Place Denfert Rochereau, Paris, France.
2016 Black River, 51 George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland.
2015 In Basho’s Footsteps, Edinburgh Fringe, Coburg House Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2019 Granny's Bones, Ruskin School of Art Degree Show, Oxford, UK.
2019 Diffracting Matters, North Wall Arts Center, Oxford, UK.
2017 Persephone, Tricaud & Pigasse, Paris, France.
2016 Dionysus Lives, National Galleries of Scotland, SSA Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh.
2016 Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, ECA Degree Show, Edinburgh, UK.
2016 Dionysus: Rites to Rave, Glasgow International Festival, Circus Between Worlds, UK.
2015 The Narrow Road to the Deep North, short-film, Nasu Short-film Festival, Japan.
2015 Archipel, Theatre de La Bastille, Paris, France.
2015 Leaf Storm and Video Haiku 1, En Dehors Festival, Paris 3, Sorbonne, Paris, France.
2015 Leaf Storm and Video Haiku 1, Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
2015 Art, Travel, Meditation, Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
2014 White Noise, Staircase Gallery, Balloch, UK.
2013 Our Happiness, Bar Ten, Glasgow, UK.
2012 Art | Biology, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA.
Selected Professional Experience
Ongoing Founder and president of The Flute & the Bowl, Oxford University’s Society for Art & Ecology
Ongoing Co-founder and Artistic Director of La Malle des Indes Artists’ Collective
Ongoing Steering committee member of Environmental Humanities TORCH research group
Ongoing Spiritual Ecology Fellow with St. Ethelburga’s Center, London.
2016-20 Teacher of art, ecology and theatre at Russian Gymnasium Paris.
2018-19 Oxford Global Leadership Initiative Fellow 2018, the Oxford Character Project
2018-19 Student representative for MFA class of 2018-19 at the Ruskin School of Art
2017 Costume designer for Summertide Theatre Company, Paris, France
2014 In Basho’s Footsteps (Project featured as 1st Arts Category Kickstarter in Scotland)
2,000km hike around Japan in the footsteps of 17th century haiku-poet Matsuo Basho. Culminated in creation of artist’s novel, Oku no Kuro Gawa.
2014 Invited artist for Adopt an Artist, an education-through-art program in collaboration with the George Heriot’s School and the National Galleries of Scotland
2014 Project Placement with Jabuti Theatre’s production My City (environmental theatre for children). Vision Mechanics and Imaginate of Creative Scotland.
2014 Internship in the Ashworth Laboratories – the Natural History collections of the University of Edinburgh (display design, research, and data-file management).
2013 Ornithology field-work and translation for Wildlife Conservation Society in Arctic Siberia, Beringia Project. (Chukotka, Russia.)
2012 Ichthyology lab-work in USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Institute of Arctic Biology of University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
2012 Became the youngest woman to circumnavigate Lake Baikal by kayak. Research expedition collecting environmental data for Dartmouth College.
2012 HHMI Intern at the Institute of Arctic Studies, Environmental geology, Dartmouth.
2009 Intern at SRMP program of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.
2008 Robert F. Kennedy internship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
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