Photo by Loren Toney.
Short Bio:
Irina Zadov (they/them) is an artist, educator, and cultural organizer. They are a queer post-Soviet Jewish immigrant living in the unceded territories of the Three Fires Confederacy: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi (Chicago, IL). Their practice explores themes of diasporism, state violence, community resistance, and healing. Irina’s creative practice is rooted in collaboration and co-creation with Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Their public programming, youth work, and cultural practice has been featured in and co-created with such institutions as: Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Art Department, Smart Museum of Art, National Museum of Mexican Art, DuSable Museum of African American History, South Side Community Art Center, Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Freedom School, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, AMFM, Englewood Line, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Public Parks, 6018North, Chicago Cultural Center, Cambodian Institute of Peace in Cambodia, and TRANSITIONS Festival of Jewish Contemporary Arts in Berlin, Germany.
Full Bio:
Irina Zadov (they/them) is an artist, educator, and cultural organizer. They are a queer post-Soviet Jewish immigrant living in the unceded territories of the Three Fires Confederacy: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi; and also the Myaamia, Inoka, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee, also known as Chicago, IL.
Their practice explores the liminal space between the individual and the collective, diasporic community and chosen family, the home and the state. Irina aims to co-create joyful, healing, and liberatory spaces with Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Irina is a student of adrienne maree brown and Mariame Kaba; their highest intention is to practice emergent strategy and abolition within all aspects of their life.
In 2012, Irina co-founded the Chicago Home Theater Festival, a city-wide collaboration addressing racial, economic, and social segregation through intimate meals, performances, and border crossing interventions staged in over 75 homes across Chicago. In 2014, Irina co-founded Cities of Peace connecting young people in post-genocide Cambodia with youth organizing against Chicago’s legacies of police torture and structural violence. In 2018, they joined the Chicago Park District as a Senior Program Specialist, where they cultivate Young Cultural Stewards and Queering the Parks which aims to create inclusive, joyful, and liberatrory LGBTQIA+ spaces center queer youth of color. In 2019 they co-founded Krivoy Kolektiv and became a committee member of Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon. Both collectives are comprised of queer and gender-marginalized post-Soviet Jews working at the intersection of de-assimilation, intergenerational healing, and coalition building to end white supremacy and settler colonialism. In 2020, Irina began What Time Is It? A Cultural & Civic Archive inspired by the teachings of Grace Lee Boggs and Chicago’s BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ artists, organizers, teachers, and healers.
Irina’s public programming, education, and creative practice has been featured in & co-created with: Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Art Department, Smart Museum of Art, National Museum of Mexican Art, DuSable Museum of African American History, South Side Community Art Center, Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Freedom School, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, AMFM, Englewood Line, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Public Parks, 6018North, Chicago Cultural Center, Cambodian Institute of Peace in Cambodia, and TRANSITIONS Festival of Jewish Contemporary Arts in Berlin, Germany.
Irina has raised over $1,000,000 to fund cultural, racial, and social justice work through grassroots donor organizing as well as grants and awards from: American Alliance of Museums, Institute of Museum and Library Services, US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Chicago Art Department, DHR Studios in The Hague, Propeller Fund, Puffin Foundation, Open Meadows Foundation, Chicago Park District, Terra Foundation for American Art, Illinois Humanities, Chicago Foundation for Women, Crossroads Fund, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Northern Trust, The Field Foundation, and Builders Initiative.