Sasha Artamonova
Alexandra (Sasha) Artamonova is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University (Evanston, USA), where she writes her dissertation under the joint supervision with École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris, France). She is 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.” In 2019 she received an MA in North American Studies from the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität in Berlin, and in 2021 she received an MA in Art History from Northwestern University. She has worked in the Education Department at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, and as a research intern at Sprüth Magers gallery and SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. Her scholarship has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Chateaubriand PhD Fellowship Program in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Embassy of France in the United States. In the 2025-2026 academic year she will reside in Paris as a Dedalus Foundation PhD Dissertation Fellow.