Eva Mahhov

Eva Mahhov has a BA Fine Arts & Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, department of Jewellery-Linking Bodies. She has additionally studied in Eindhoven Design Academy (Critical Inquiry Lab) and Tartu University (Philosophy). Her BA thesis explores ways to bring attention and emphasis to the role and importance of politics within the quotidian, with focus on the hierarchies and inequalities of knowledge production. Her practice looks into manifestations of linearity of power and epistemic injustices, questioning the perspectives that are universally accepted in the status quo of Western cultural superiority. She explores artistic intervention as a tool for interruption and involvement with established societal structures. She is a founding member (2019-2021) of Student Council Rietveld Academie, and her work as a student and institutional worker focused on setting up support structures for funding and guiding community-oriented practices within the academy and beyond, as well as exploring nonhierarchical collective methodologies of institutional critique. She was a member of the Participatory Council of both Rietveld Academie and Design Academy Eindhoven. As an alumni, she has been commissioned by the academy as a researcher. Since 2020, she has coordinated a series of events under the collective Second Thoughts, manifesting in an experimental residency, reading groups, talks and panel discussions, examining the positionality of Eastern European artists and discourse. Recently, she has worked with artists in assistance to producing work that has been exhibited in Stedelijk Museum, Rotterdam IFFR, Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam) and MAK Forum (Vienna), as well as independent artist-run project spaces.