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Alexandra Tsay
Alexandra Tsay is an independent curator and a PhD candidate in the Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Art History at Concordia University. Her research examines how contemporary art in Kazakhstan emerged and evolved from the late Soviet to the post-independence period, tracing and theorizing shifts in aesthetic strategies while exploring the notion of cultural sovereignty from the global perspective. Alexandra was a visiting fellow at the Central Asia Program at the George Washington University and an international research fellow at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul in 2017.
Her doctoral research has been supported by FRQSC Doctoral Training Scholarships, Concordia University Graduate Fellowship and Concordia International Tuition Award of Excellence. She is a recipient of a the Merit Scholarship for Foreign Students (PBEEE) issued by Fonds de recherche du Québec.
Working Thesis Title: Vernacular Abstraction and Cultural Autonomy: Contemporary Art in Kazakhstan in 1985-2019
Supervisor: Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim
Research Interests:
- Global contemporary art
- Central Asia
- Postsocialist cultures
- Non-modernist abstraction
Teaching Assistantships:
- ARTH 200-A & B Perspectives of Art History, Dr. Steven Stowell, Dr. Sarah Carter, 2023-2024
- ARTH 200-A & B Perspectives of Art History, Dr. Steven Stowell, Dr. Julia Skelly, 2024-2025
Research Assistantships:
- Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions, Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim, Spring 2024 and Spring 2025
Co-edited Volumes:
- Abylkhozhin, Zhulduzbek, Akulov, Mikhail, Tsay, Alexandra. Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021.
Book Chapters:
- “Contemporary art in Central Asia.” In The Routledge Handbook on contemporary Central Asia, edited by Rico Isaacs, Erica Marat. London: Routledge, 2021.
- “Between Oblivion and Remembrance.” In Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Alexandra Tsay et al. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021.
- “Contemporary Art as a Public Forum in Kazakhstan.” In The Nazarbayev Generation. Youth in Kazakhstan, edited by Marlene Laruelle. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.
Conferences:
- Postcolonial Hauntologies Art in the Presence – Absence of the Past, co-convenor, Concordia University, University of Amsterdam, March 2025.
- “Obscuring Erasure: Diaspora, Photography, and Counter-Archive in the work of Kazakh Korean artist Alexander Ugay”, The 2024 UAAC-AAUC Conference, Western University, London, Ontario, October 2024.