East European Performing Arts Platform (EEPAP) supports the
development of contemporary performing arts (dance and theatre)
in 18 countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Irina Solomatina - Art researcher and art manager
Irina Solomatina is the director of the experimental project “Gender Itinerary: a festival of ideas about gender/sex” (Minsk) and researcher of Center for European Studies (Minsk).
Irina Solamatina was born in 1969 in Minsk and she graduated from the Philological department of the Belarusian State University. Started her professional activity with organizing art exhibitions, seminars and conferences about the arts.
While working for the film studio “Tatyana”, she took part in the organization of three international women’s film festivals in Minsk (1995, 1997, 1999) and she was the organizer of the Female social forum in 2006 and the project “Gender route: festival of ideas about gender/sex” (2005, 2007, 2009, 2010).
Post-graduate of EHU, (Ph.D. programme Department of Media and Communication), the theme of her research is “Gender aspects of modern female dramatic art”.
The most important projects:
Worked as an art curator. Organized the following exhibitions:
- “White Art Festival” (more than 100 artists from all over Belarus) at the “Alter ago” gallery (Minsk) 1994
- Organizer of international women’s film festivals (cinema studio “Tayana”)
- The international photo project: “Ways of city mapping: experience of a flâneuse” represents a cycle of photo exhibitions stretched in time, 2009
Since 2005 initiator and organizer of the experimental project "Gender Itinerary: festival of ideas about "sex/gender". This project is based around a few main questions: what is "sex/gender" and intersexual relations, motherhood, parenthood and its aversions, violence and love; where is the virtual boundary between masculine and feminine; are the distinctions between representatives of one sex more or less essential, than distinctions between individuals of opposite sex? The concept: Is the perception of a person outside of sexual aspect possible? Do we reflect the fact that only the presence (or absence) of a set of “typical” sexual attributes and features of behaviour enables (or does not) human existence and communication?
International Women's Film Festival (Minsk – Koln – Wien – New York).
Theoretical researches on female subjects (the selected publications):
- “Literary experience of self-knowledge “, Wargazm , 1 (2003), p.24-25
- "Plays of passion, or speaking for oneself ": art, gender and creating of Arbatova's and Popova's writer identity, “The feministic criticism“
- “Where «the Gender route» led”, Pro-design. Collected articles, №. 16, Minsk, 2006, P.38
- “In searches of oneself between the birth and the death: (female) corporal subject in «бу» (-dance) and «to» (-heavy step)”, Philosophical magazine Topos, №15, (2007)
- “The feministic approach to interpretation of the image”, the Collection of scientific articles sourced from international scientifically-educational forum Europe-2007: the new neighborhood, on May, 6-7th 2007, Lithuania, Vilnius