We are a queer, post-Soviet Jewish artist collective, based on occupied land in the U.S. We root in radical ancestral hxstories to de-assimilate and re-envision Jewish diasporic traditions, in opposition to settler colonialism and white supremacy.
We were brought together by the mystical powers of our ancestors and our collective longing for one another. We grew up in the post-Soviet Jewish diaspora. Originally from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, our families settled in California, Colorado and Illinois in the 80s and 90s. We found each other online, through shared questions and desires. Our visual inquiry is grounded in: colonization, whiteness, cisheteropatriarchy, power, memory, and ritual. Our желание (desires) are to transform our inherited trauma and the violence committed in our names into alchemical collective liberation.
Our collaboration began in 2019, through a virtual popular education project which evolved into Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon, a collective of 40+ queer and gender marginalized post-Soviet Jewish immigrants. Our first real-life meeting was through an artist retreat at ways residency in Hungary, where we spent two weeks together creating art, performing ritual, and visioning. Our interdisciplinary art has featured in the TRANSITIONS Festival of Jewish Contemporary Arts in Berlin (2021) and in the 5782 Radical Jewish Calendar (2022).
Sophia Sobko (she/they) sophiasobko.com, @shopysobs
I am made of snowy Moscow high rises, Borodinskiy хлеб, pink-green summers at the dacha, getting lost в лесу with my babushka. When I was five, just months before the fall of the USSR, I moved with my immediate family from Moscow to San Diego, CA. Over the next decades I learned how to become American and white, under Chrisitian hegemony. Today, as I reconnect with my intuition/magic, I grieve the harm of assimilation, the oppression my family endured in Russia, and the violence being committed in my name here in the U.S. and globally. I ground in the wisdom and resilience of my elders + predki, find presence in my art practice, and join with other queer, post-Soviet Jews to envision our part in co-liberation.
Irina Zadov (she/they) irinazadov.com, @irinazadov
My favorite childhood memories unfold in the magical forests of Belarus. Gathering грибы (mushrooms) with my family and losing my Olympic Mishka pocket knife; my Дедушка Митя (grandpa Mitya) hiding candy and asking me to find it by hugging my favorite tree; summers at the dacha gatherings земленика (wild strawberries) and pickling огурцы (cucumbers). My family left the Soviet Union months before it collapsed. I was seven years old and it was winter of 1991. In the USSR we were taught to critique capitalism, racism, and inequality, while coveting bananas, Coca Cola, and blue jeans. In the US, I learned about the roots of this criticism in histories of settler colonialism, slavery, and genocide. I also learned about legacies of grassroots organizing and movements for liberation. I began to imagine my pace within these movements as a person whose identifies are both privileged and marginalized. For me, connecting and creating with other queer Post-Soviet Jews is a practice of ancestral healing and co-liberation that I have longed for all my life.
Aravah Berman-Mirkin (they / them) zhydovka.me, @zhyd0vka
My immediate family relocated to the US as Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union shortly before I was born. My childhood was a complex tangle of cultures and identities — “Amerikanka”, “Russian”, “Jewish”. Ever since I can remember, food has been the primary glue that has kept me connected to traditions of my семья and предки (family and ancestors). Visiting my grandparents always means spreads of сало (cured pork lard) on black bread, colorful soups all year long, cherry вареники (dumplings) piled high with sour cream, amongst the gardens they lovingly filled with plants of their родина (homeland). Following the family “tradition”, I continue the intricate and complex journey of living in the diaspora, complete with deep longing and grief, and a faraway feeling of “home”. I am eternally grateful for my queer-post-soviet-jewish семья, the gay poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sophia Parnok, the plants and mushrooms I grow and forage just as my family has for decades, and the courage and wherewithal to embark on a Jewish practice centering not-knowing, curiosity and justice.