Mari Bastashevski

Mari Bastashevski (born 1980) is a Danish photographer who operates now from Switzerland and France. Her fields of specialization are in visual arts photography, writing, and research. Her photographic assignments involve investigative research, art, and journalism, through specific case studies or projects of "mundane routine of the defense and surveillance trade industries". In one such project titled "State Business" she presents images and texts, in several chapters, related to the services or shipped commodities from the stage of manufacture to the final destination with photographic record of the "governmental institution, a broker, or a business". She photographs the "unphotographable" pertaining to holistic failures like "corruption, abuse of power, propaganda or the economies of conflict".

Mari Bastashevski was born in 1980 in Saint Petersburg. Her higher education was from the Danish Media and Journalism School in the field of Art History, Genocide studies, and photography. She has a BA degree in Political Science and Art History from the Copenhagen University and a MA degree in photography.

From 2007 to 2010, her professional assignment was in the Russian North Caucasus region on a project titled "File 126 (Disappearing in the Caucasus)", in Russia and the North Caucasus, which pertained to Russian counter terrorism manifesting in the form of abductions of civilians. The abductions that she covered also related to period of 10 years in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan. Her photographic representation of these abductions were exhibited at many centers such as Noorderlicht, the Open Society Foundation, Paris Photo, Unseen, and Fotomuseum Winterthur. For this project, she studied the case files of Human rights organizations related to abductions of young people and she visited the families of abducted persons.

In 2010, Bastashevski's photographic assignments covered the "State Business", launched in related to the "conflict commodities and surveillance industrial complex". In addition, she also worked on "Privileged/Confidential" which examined historical influence of individuals. Another project she worked in Ukraine in 2014 was titled "Empty with a whiff of blood and fumes" in which she projected the inter relationship of money, power, and organised crime, which had preceded the civil war there.

Bastashevski worked from 2011 as a resident artist at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris. In 2013, she was recipient of the Magnum Emergency Fund for the project "State Business" pertaining to the international arms trade industry; she received this award for reaching the finals during her participation in a 2011 residency at the Cite des Arts for the first edition of the Prix Elysée.

Bastashevski has also been involved in research work on the right of privacy with the Privacy International and the Small Arms Survey.

In 2016, Bastashevski has been associated as an artist-in-residence on a commercial container ship. She is also formally represented on Galerie Polaris, Paris, and the Stead Bureau, Hague.

Bastashevski's work has received appreciation from Barry W. Hughes of Super Massive Black Hole magazine who said: "Her subjects are difficult and her approach is a kind of ascetic undertaking".

Bastashevski has held exhibitions of her research work through photographs at the following centers.

• 2013 Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Paris
• 2013 Unseen, Amsterdam
• 2013 To Have and Have Not, Noorderlicht, Groningen
• 2012 Clamor, Grande Plage, Biarritz
• 2012 PLAT(T)FORM 2012, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur

Her works have also been published in Courrier International, The New York Times, Musee de l’Elysee, Noorderlicht and Art Souterrain.

Bastashevski's publications cover the following.

• La diva punk de Maïdan, Le Monde
• City of Leaks, Le Monde
• Antonov, Le Monde
• The Far Right, Le Monde
• File 126 and text for The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
• Traffic, Revue XX