Vaida Stepanovaite

Vaida Stepanovaite is a curator of visual and discursive works that respond to the cultural and political presence(s) of post-socialism. 

Vaida is part of the MPhil/PhD Advanced Practices programme at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she engages in a practice-based research on the relations and tensions between the institutive, the radical, and the communal in the contemporary art field. 

To this end, Vaida’s research is intertwined with her curatorial practice that spans through various instances of what can be called the ‘independent’ or ‘self-organised'. For a number of years she has co-run-and-curated project spaces, such as Swallow space in Vilnius (Lithuania) and a nomadic/offsite space Kabinetas that started in Lithuania as well. She has collectively set up or been involved in various other independent initiatives, such as communal research platforms with Noah Brehmer; one of which, Naujininkai Commons, instantiates a district in Vilnius as commoning against incoming urban development. Or, a group that convenes on a basis of art workers’ representation and advocacy in Lithuania, and a discussion about the structures of solidarity and their history in the Baltics. 

Vaida’s writing has appeared in cultural magazines and artistic publications. Activity in 2021-2022 includes editing Anastasia Sosunova’s artist notes Express Method (pub. Swallow and Kabinetas); as well as being one of the authors of a collective text for an upcoming publication on the commons after state socialism (ed. Noah Brehmer, Mary Taylor, co-published with Commons Notions, NY), and is an Assistant Editor for a publication on autonomy and autonomism in post-socialist landscapes (ed. Noah Brehmer, co-published with Autonomedia, UK).