Mari Bastashevski

Mari Bastashevski’s work spreads across the disciplines of investigative research, journalism, and art, deliberately blurring the boundaries among them in an attempt to challenge existing information delivery modes and bridge the spaces between practices. Her work “It’s Nothing Personal” is set in the space between what global surveillance firms promote in their self-representation and what the testimonies of those directly affected by these technologies disclose. Her other ongoing projects include “State Business” focuses on the international conflict participants, defence and cyber surveillance industries, and layers of state secrecy under which they operate; and “Empty with a whiff of blood and fumes” a project set in Ukraine addressing the nexus of money, power, and organised crime in the build up to the “hybrid war” there. Between 2007 and 2010, she worked in the Russian North Caucasus on “File-126,” a project about the abductions of civilians under the guise of Russian counterterrorism regime. Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Courrier International, Le Monde, VICE, and exhibited with Elysée-Musée de l’Elysée, Art Souterrain, the Open Society Foundations, Polaris Gallery and East Wing, among others. In 2010, she spent a year as artist in residency at Cite des Arts. She studied Art History and Political Science in Copenhagen. She is based in Switzerland, but she is never home.