ECOFEMINIST DIALOGUES IN ART / Panel discussion
Date: 23 May
Time: 19:00
Venue: Goethe Zentrum Baku
Address: 35, 28 May street, Kapellhaus Garden
In the face of escalating ecological crises and deep-rooted gender inequalities, art offers a vital space for reimagining our relationship with the planet and each other. The international panel discussion “Ecofeminist Dialogues in Art” brings together artists and thinkers from the United States, Australia, and Azerbaijan to explore how ecological consciousness, feminism, and contemporary pop-art aesthetics intersect in visual culture today.
Titled “Art, Ecology: Reimagining Our Connection with Nature,” the 90-minute conversation will delve into how artistic practices can address environmental concerns while challenging patriarchal and consumerist paradigms. Panelists will share insights into their creative processes, discuss how the body, nature, and society are represented through pop-inspired visuals, and consider how art can act as a tool for both resistance and healing.
By highlighting diverse voices and cultural perspectives, this dialogue invites audiences to engage with ecofeminism not only as a critical theory but as a living, creative practice. The panel aims to cultivate community engagement, foster critical awareness, and inspire action toward a more just and sustainable world one that is rooted in care, interconnectedness, and radical imagination.
Sitara Ibrahimbayli
Sitara Ibrahimbayli is a multimedia artist, curator, and lecturer whose work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 6th Moscow Biennale (Our Land/Alien Territory), the 55th and 56th Venice Biennales (The Great Game at the Iran Pavilion/ Love me Love me not Yarat pavilion ), and the 2015 exhibition BALAGAN!!!: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places with MOMENTUM in Berlin. She also frequently presents her work in Baku.
Educated at FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague, Sitara brings a multidisciplinary approach to her practice.
Since 2018, she has been the co-founder and creative director of VarYox Art and Culture Platform-Azerbaijan’s first bilingual (Azerbaijani-English) platform dedicated to fostering social change through the intersection of art, culture, and civic engagement. The platform places a strong emphasis on using art as a catalyst for social awareness.
She is also the founder of Her Art in Action, an annual festival that celebrates and supports women artists. Since 2020, Sitara has been teaching at the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts.
Diana Shpungin
Diana Shpungin is a Latvian-born American multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her work in drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, video, sound, and hand-drawn pencil animation. Her work explores non-traditional ideas of drawing through sculptural and time-based processes.
Diana Shpungin was born in Riga, Latvia under Soviet rule. As a child she emigrated with her family to the United States, where they settled in New York City. Shpungin earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and has taught and lectured at multiple institutions. She is currently an associate professor at Parsons School of Design.
Shpungin’s work often deals with themes of memory, longing, loss, and empathy. Influenced by artists like Felix Gonzales-Torres, Shpungin uses deeply personal motifs and narratives in her drawings, sculptures, and video works, often combined with found objects to emphasize a concept that she refers to as “object empathy”. In her smaller sculptures and larger installations, Shpungin explores objects and architecture to emphasize contrasting themes such as domestic and communal, light and dark, or interior and exterior.
Diana Shpungin has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in both national and international venues, including: Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Invisible Exports, New York, NY; Marc Straus Gallery, New York, NY; New Discretions, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Franconia Sculpture Park, Minneapolis, MN; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; SiTE:LAB, Grand Rapids, MI; Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France; Fieldgate Gallery, London, England; Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic; Galerie Zurcher, Paris, France; and Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
Shpungin was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2019/2020), the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (2017), and several grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2015, 2020, 2022). She is also the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Art Omi, Bau Institute at Camargo Foundation, Bronx Museum AIM Program, CEC Artslink, Dieu Donne,La Maison Dora Maar, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell, and Yaddo.
Ma-El Weiher
Ma-El Weiher (born 1999) studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence and works primarily with printmaking and painting. The exploration of public spaces and their intimate, vulnerable aspects is the central theme of her work. Ma-El has received several awards and participated in solo and group exhibitions held in Florence, Istanbul, Freiburg, Baden-Baden, Klagenfurt, Stuttgart and Vienna.