Maria Silina (they/them) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Their research focuses on museology in Eastern Europe, approached through a plurality of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Since 2023, they have been involved in a collaborative project dedicated to the circulation and nationalization of cultural objects in the USSR between 1917 and 1991, within the broader context of socialist countries. Developed within a short-term grant economy, this project unfolds through international collaborations, case studies, collective initiatives, and co-writing practices. It makes use of digital tools, databases, and collaborative platforms, with a particular emphasis on the production of big data (digitized archives, recognition tools) and their sharing among researchers, artists, and activists.

Part of their research focuses on the large-scale, globalized structures of the socialist art market and on the transgressive circulations between East and West. In this context, they explore questions of provenance, the infrastructures of interconnected exchanges, and their contemporary legacies.

Maria Silina also examines museology as a field shaped by art theory, analyzing issues related to display, concepts of history, and the role of experts in the discursive and visual transformation of object representation across shifting contexts of knowledge production.

Alongside their work in museology and art theory, they are interested in the philosophy of the epistemological era (phenomenology, neo-Kantianism) and in the history of science, considered both as a foundation of our models of knowledge and as a tool for reflecting on future perspectives.

Here are some links to their projects:

  • Museums in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe: Rethinking Soviet Museum Management (2024) https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/transfer/article/view/108903
  • The Soviet Museum Network in the Perspective of the Current War in Ukraine (2023) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr2RLih5hH8
  • Anatoly Bakushinsky’s projects in art studies and knowledge production at the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (2021) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11212-021-09439-w