Belarusian art critic and researcher Tatsiana Artsimovich has become a recipient of the Igor Zabel Award Grant 2026. The prestigious international grant is awarded every two years to outstanding curators, art historians and theorists from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
This year, the international jury highly praised Tatsiana Artsimovich’s long-standing work, highlighting her significant contribution to the study of contemporary Belarusian art, performance art, and the history of the Belarusian avant-garde, both in Belarus and within the Belarusian diaspora.
The experts particularly emphasized the value of her research into the development of independent Belarusian art during periods of socio-cultural transformation, with a focus on institutional structures, gender issues and collective memory.
Tatsiana Artsimovich is an art researcher, curator, director and art critic. She earned her doctoral degree at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Erfurt, where she works on the international project “Protecting At-Risk Scholars.” She is a co-founder of the pARTisan platform and the author of numerous academic publications on the history of the Belarusian avant-garde and independent art. She is the author of the monograph “We are Like the Foremothers: Traces of the Avant-gardes in Soviet Belarus” (2023) and co-editor of academic volumes on gender and migration.
Belarusian Presence in the Award’s History
The recognition of Tatsiana Artsimovich marks another success for the Belarusian expert community at the international level. Previously, in 2022, Belarusian curator Antonina Stsiabur received the Igor Zabel Award for her curatorial work and research on contemporary Belarusian art.
Who Else Won in 2026?
The main award this year went to Nataliia Ivanova, curator and founding director of the YermilovCentre Centre for Contemporary Art in Kharkiv. The jury recognized her efforts to preserve cultural dialogue and support the local community in a city located close to the frontline, where the art center serves both as a gallery and a safe space.
Alongside Tatsiana Artsimovich, grants were also awarded to curator Octavian Esanu (Beirut/Tokyo) for his research into connections between the postcolonial Middle East and post-socialist Eastern Europe, and curator Olena Karavai (Ukraine) for developing sustainable regional arts initiatives during times of crisis.
About the Award
The Igor Zabel Award was established in 2008 and is presented in cooperation with the ERSTE Foundation (Vienna) and the Igor Zabel Association (Ljubljana). The award aims to highlight the global significance of cultural processes taking place in Central and Eastern Europe.
The award ceremony and accompanying cultural program will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on November 27, 2026.
Subscribe to Reform.news cultural coverage on Telegram: https://t.me/cult_front
