</Fabrika's International Residency: A Look into the Center's Oldest Artistic Programs of Support>
author: Christina Pestova
Artist Andrea Seidling at Fabrika. Photo credit: Katya Kraeva, 2021
Christina Pestova — independent researcher and curator, currently based in Stockholm. Her practice focuses on the exploration of space and territories, reflecting on the multiplicity of urban and rural narratives. From 2016 to 2024, she held the position of curator at the Center for Creative Industries ‘Fabrika’. In 2023–2024, she was a fellow researcher at the University of Gothenburg.
A-I-R — the “Artist-in-Residence” program at Fabrika (Moscow) — was launched in 2008, originally designed for international artists.
A-I-R — the “Artist-in-Residence” program at Fabrika (Moscow) — was launched in 2008, originally designed for international artists.
What is a residency? I am springing this question while sitting and staring at the space that used to host and shelter so many of Fabrika’s residents, foreign and local artists, seminars, conferences, and workshops — all of those warm and embracing meetings that left my understanding and vision of our residency program so clean and crisp.
I am now staring at it from afar, trying to sketch out what can be called a cast, a shape that one can take to overview, evaluate, and collect. The experience of Fabrika’s residency has been flowing and lasting through the years I was connected to it, hosting and working with the artists who came to Moscow to work, create, meet the city, or — sometimes — just dwell in the factory’s premises, waiting for the tracks of time to coincide and lead them further.
Christina Pestova
I came to work with the residence at CCI Fabrika in 2016. From its very beginning, the program was tailored to host international artists — those, whose ideas of Russia and Russian contemporary art could have been both vague and clear, who wanted to understand a new context and build up a research, artwork, or a project in dialogue with locals.
Space and art studio for participants of the “Artist-in-Residence” program at Fabrika (Moscow). Photo credits: Pic 1. CCI Fabrika. Pic 2. Katya Kraeva
It is impossible to name and reflect on the conversations and relationships with everyone whom I was happy to encounter over the last 8 – 9 years. We had artists coming from Brazil, Estonia, Finland, the USA, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Switzerland, to name a few. Yet there are some whom I want to sculpt with words in this text and leave, therefore, a picture, of what might have been a thin and delicate bridge that was possible to forge — so recently — together.
Lucas Gervilla, Brasil
Exposição Abandonamento: Brasil/Rússia, Lucas Gervilla, 2019. Photos courtesy of the artist’s website.
In 2017, a Brazilian photographer, artist, and researcher Lucas Gervilla came to Fabrika. His idea was to reveal and brush off the notion and remaining ‘monuments’ of abandoned places: what they are, how they remain, what space they take in personal and collective memory, how we relate to these ruins, and what they stand for once encountered? Lucas outlined a list of places he was intrigued to visit — abandoned towers, monuments of constructivism, buildings, and places left uninhabited. Starting from this, we made a trip together to an empty pioneer camp outside of Moscow. Left alone in the forest, it remained as a fossil so familiar to those of us who were growing up in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period.
Video Abandonamento: Brasil/Rússia, Single-channel Version, Lucas Gervilla, 2019. Video courtesy of the artist’s website.
While searching for it, jumping over the fence, and crawling under an almost deconstructed concrete staircase to find the pioneer-themed mosaics in a big dormitory hall, Lucas was searching for the ground that could form and compare the reflection and experience of the abandoned place. This trip and this research grew into something much bigger. In 2019, Lucas made a show Exposição Abandonamento: Brasil/Rússia while continuing to build up a vast visual base for his conceptual research. In 2025, Lucas defended his PhD research Aesthetics of Abandonment: Abandoned Places, Ruins, Memory and Art (by Lucas Rossi Gervilla, 2025) at the University of Greifswald (Germany). His work with the topics of abandoned places and the notion of memory connected to them has never stopped, as well as the friendship that emerged over these years and our dialogue.
Artists from Austria — Axel Stockburger
In 2018, Fabrika and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Moscow agreed to collaborate and invite four Austrian artists every year to come and work at Fabrika’s residency. As a result, for at least 2,5 years, we had an opportunity to host and work with filmmakers, artists, performers, and architects coming from different parts of Austria — and beyond.
Red Stars, Alex Stockburger, UHD video, 68:46 min. color sound, Edition of 5/+1, courtesy of the artist, 2018.
For instance, filmmaker and educator Axel Stockburger directed and made a film over the period of his 3-months residency based on his research and reflection on Alexander Bogdanov’s book “The Red Star” (1908). The screening of the film took place at the Agency of Singular Investigations (Anna Titova and Stas Shuripa) — leading to a thought-provoking conversation with Axel and the students of the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Vasilena Gankovska, Bulgaria / Austria
Moscow Cinema Project, Vasilena Gankovska, 2019. Photos courtesy of the artist’s website. The second photo was made by Christina Pestova.
Vasilena Gankovska, an artist from Bulgaria based in Vienna, has produced a vast collection of drawings of the old Soviet movie theaters which were about to — and some of them already had been — be demolished to be turned into a new and modern network of cinemas. Vasilena traveled from one cinema to another, meticulously sketching, and capturing images of the past about to be forgotten. The results of this project were put on display at the apartment of Simon Mraz, then head of the ACF, and later, a participation in the project In Situ (2019, curated by Anna Kozlovskaya and Christina Pestova) where Vasilena’s passion for movie theaters on the outskirts was accompanied by the projects by her fellow artists who have carefully studied Moscow’s suburbs.
Andrea Seidling, Austria
Andrea Seidling. Photo credit: Katya Kraeva, 2021.
In 2021, the last artist from the Austrian program came to visit and work at Fabrika’s residency. Andrea Seidling, architect, curator, and filmmaker decided to conduct research about an almost forgotten history of the Moscow period of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the first female architect in Austria. Margarete was an active communist and was among the few German and Austrian architects who came to Russia to work in the new Soviet state. The traces of Margarete's residency are almost lost these days yet the house where she used to live still stands in the labyrinths of old Moscow. Andrea has tracked these traces to turn them into a future film project.
Stephanie Rosianu
A Conversation Between You and Me, Stephanie Rosianu, Moscow, 2018. Photo credit: Christina Pestova.
In 2018, I met Stephanie Rosianu, a media artist and poet whose practice was embedded in the poetical range of contemporary art. A Conversation Between You and Me, a personal exhibition Stephanie made at Fabrika, the artist presented a series of embroidery, an installation, and a booklet with publications, the theme of which was conversation.
A conversation with ourselves as well as with others best shows who we are and how we see ourselves from the outside. Stephanie positioned her artworks as signs in the exhibition space to invite viewers to engage in a dialogue with each other.
Kristi Lippire, USA
A few months later, in the late spring of 2019, an American artist and educator Kristi Lippire came to work at Fabrika’s residence. During her stay, Kristi Lippire studied the works of the outstanding Soviet avant-garde artist, designer, and bright representative of constructivism — Varvara Stepanova. Inspiration from the work of Varvara Stepanova has grown into the artist's study of constructivism, interest in modernist architecture, and how its constructive forms can be (re)formed with the help of color.
Kristi Lippire in her studio in Los Angeles. Photo credit: Kia Harlan, 2023
What started as a study of archives and outlining thoughts of making a sculpture of Stepanova turned into a vast collection of photographs of those architectural objects that were created without color: these are elements of the design of modernism (American brutalism) and geometry of Soviet constructivism. Lippire selected these design elements and created special patterns from them. Being a professor in the field of color theory, Lippire offered to turn color into language to create a dynamic system where two coexisting codes — form and color — could be revealed in one abstract system.
5 years later, in 2024, we held a solo exhibition of Kristi’s works at Fabrika. I met her in Berlin where she flew from LA, and took the works from her first to Stockholm and then to Istanbul and Moscow. At the exhibition, her graphics, collages, textile works, and costumes were put on display.
Those works paid tribute to Varvara Stepanova and the entire movement of constructivism, as well as the time she spent researching it in Moscow — that shaped and influenced the recent creative process of Kristi.
Those works paid tribute to Varvara Stepanova and the entire movement of constructivism, as well as the time she spent researching it in Moscow — that shaped and influenced the recent creative process of Kristi.
Neeka Allsup, USA
The last, but not least is Neeka Allsup, an artist from Saint Louis (USA), who does painting and street art. Neeka came to Moscow at a time when no one thought it was possible — in the hot summer of 2024 and immediately immersed herself in the process of meeting, learning, and understanding the context she had found herself in. Neeka delivered a public talk to Fabrika’s viewers and left us with a beautiful mural work emerging as if from the outer world on one of Fabrika’s backside walls.
Neeka Allsup at Fabrika. Photo credit: Christina Pestova.
So what is a residency? Can I pin it down to exhibitions, projects, and discussions we have had throughout the years I was curating the program? As fluid as it can be, the notion and physical presence of it is slipping through my fingers. Yet the subtle touch of our connections stays, leaving a feeling of a so–much-needed-these-days handshake.
CCI Fabrika is an independent art center, creative production site, and open space for artist studios. Over the 20 years of its existence, Fabrika has hosted festivals and served as a platform for communal activities within its neighborhood (To Enter & to Permit, 2016, In Situ, 2019, Boundaries of the Invisible, 2023), and challenged the hierarchical system of art education (ICA, 2016–current, Unovis, 2023).
Fabrika aims to create a comfortable place for work and creativity, and to become a platform for the presentation of non-profit art projects in support of contemporary artists. Fabrika is home to artist studios, art residencies, music production studios, design and architecture bureaus, theater and animation groups as well as publishing and printing houses.
Fabrika aims to create a comfortable place for work and creativity, and to become a platform for the presentation of non-profit art projects in support of contemporary artists. Fabrika is home to artist studios, art residencies, music production studios, design and architecture bureaus, theater and animation groups as well as publishing and printing houses.