Victoria Lomasko
Victoria Lomasko’s (b. 1978) practice of graphic reportage synthesizes image and text, taking the form of novels, journalism, comics, paintings and monumental murals. A renowned dissident voice in the highly censored environment of contemporary Russia, Lomasko’s seminal graphic novels, including Other Russias and Forbidden Art, have an honest style exposing the country’s inequalities and injustices whilst amplifying and defending the plight of Russia’s many voiceless and unseen communities. Travelling across Russia and neighbouring countries, often at huge personal risk, her work often embraces a magical realist sensibility as a method of processing subjective and visceral experiences. Lomasko’s most recent novel, The Last Soviet Artist, finished three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is a timely work anticipating the region’s seismic political changes that won the 2022 Free Voice award from PEN Catalan.