Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks Originals for sale

Created especially for Meeting Points 7, this project is a graphic series investigating the history and current state of Moscow's Institute for African Studies, where I worked for 9 years as a research fellow. The series consists of captioned portraits of academics and cartoons reflecting on more general notions connected to African Studies in Russia.

As a part of the project, I conducted a number of interviews with the Institute staff. The topics varied from the Institute’s history to their backgrounds and experiences as employees of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The interviews were later summarised into short captions, which accompany the portraits.

In the second, cartoon part of the piece, I discuss some more general issues, such as exoticisation and self-exoticisation, issues of language and a bizarre position of being an Africanist in contemporary Russia.

Techniques

Inspiration

Academia, Boredom