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GM 1Galina Moskaleva born in Siauliai, Lithuania. She graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Minsk in 1976, with a specialization in roads and bridges. Since 1988, she has changed professions many times: press photographer, journalist, curator of art projects, teacher of art photography.

Her favorite hobby as a child was to photograph and to print in the "magic" dark room with her father. She began her creative career during the time of "stagnation" of the USSR, which could not help her in her interests in creativity. In 1984, she began working in the Minsk underground studio of Valeria Lobko. She became engaged in social projects, actively using chemicals in order to paint black and white photos, achieving sometimes-screaming bright colors on a black and white photograph that would express her attitude towards the events and trying to find meaning in life. Several series of works: "Elections", "Soviet album", "Nut-House" are in the FNAC (Le Fonds national d'art contemporain) collection in Paris.
During the perestroika era, starting in 1989, she dedicated her work to understanding various social issues and resolving existential questions on her purpose in this world. Galina turned to her father's old negatives. He photographed a lot for his family before its breaking up. Again, she used different chemicals and manipulations under the enlarger helping her to create a dynamic color feeling in the still image; and in this way trying to find answers in space and time. By studying the images themselves, she restored, reconstructed time. She worked on the project, "Memories of Childhood" for ten years. These photos are in the following collections: Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico, Santa Fe; Hasselblad Collection, Gothenborg, Sweden; National Museum of Art, Minsk.

She considers the project, "Echoes of Silence" organized by the Goethe Institute Director, Vera Bogalyants, on the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster as her most significant social project. The series, "Children who underwent thyroid gland surgery" raises the question of the limit of reasonableness beyond which no one should go. These photos are in the following collections: FNAC (Le Fonds national d'art contemporain), Paris; Modern Art Museum, Stockholm; Hasselblad Collection, Gothenborg, Sweden; Museum of Photography, Moscow.

De-secularism has now made it possible to create new models of interaction between religion and society. Galina met with Jesuit Father Janez Sever, SJ, who sought to connect photography with Scripture and personal human experiences. A premonition of something important, the spiritual, the other led to the creation of the art group, "Workshop on the Mount". It presented a new methodology to the making of the image. It involved a retreat with prayer and meditation on the Scriptures. GM 2

The creative method of the "Workshop on the Mount" unites theological knowledge with reflections on personal life experience of the incarnation of the Word of God. This forms the creative personality of the artist and in this way there is a spiritual rebirth of the person to a new life, a new reality of life in the works carried out as acts of transformation and catharsis of the artist's life is a very peculiar 'search'. This is an experiment in the creation of new forms of figurative fine art, based on the transcendental experience. In this method, Galina sees an 'exit' from the current crisis of the modern culture of postmodernism.

Galina lives and works in Moscow making photography, video and installations


Mdina Biennale Venues