Sasha Baydal
At Fonderie Darling, Sasha Baydal continues her work on the SPHERE(S) Mile End / With Ukraine: Shifting Spheres and Returns project, which will be presented in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal in June 2026 as part of SPHERE(S), founded and directed by Chantal Pontbriand.
Taking the Mile End neighbourhood as its starting point, the project explores the shared histories between Ukrainian communities, the trajectories of Quebec and Canada, as well as the forms of migration, diaspora, memory, and coexistence that traverse these contexts. It also examines the place of migrant communities within territories shaped by Indigenous presence, successive layers of colonization, and contemporary issues, while prompting reflection on forms of transnational Indigenous identity and the circulation of knowledge, memories, and solidarity that they enable. The residency provides an opportunity to deepen fieldwork and to support the production and presentation of the project to audiences at PHI, the Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec, and in the Mile End and Rosemont neighbourhoods.
At the same time, Baydal is using the residency to reclaim a space for independent writing. There, they develop essays, poetic fragments, and so-called “non-productive” forms of writing. This writing explores ways of being in the world, emotions, digital interconnection, solitude, and the search for tenderness in an oversaturated present, where experiences seem absorbed by interfaces and erased by overstimulation. Thus, the residency brings together two complementary strands: on the one hand, the development of a collective project rooted in stories of migration and memory; on the other, the reconstruction of a personal space where thinking, writing, and feeling can exist beyond the logic of immediate utility.
Biography
Sasha Baydal (they/them), who divides their time between the Occitanie region of France and Istanbul, identifies as a queer person from Eastern Europe. Their research and curatorial practice focuses on experiences of displacement and diaspora, drawing on a family history shaped by various forms of mobility and grounded in decolonial and queer approaches. Sasha Baydal has collaborated with institutions and cultural actors in Europe, West Asia, North America, and Japan. In 2021, Sasha Baydal co-founded the collective Beyond the Post-Soviet (BTPS). They are a Villa Kujoyama fellow, with support from the Institut français, the Institut français du Japon, and the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation.
Recent exhibitions
| 2026 | Curatorial research residency, Villa Kujoyama / Institut français, Kyoto, JP SPHERE(S) Mile End – With Ukraine: Shifting Spheres and Returns, curated project, SPHERE(S) in collaboration with Fonderie Darling and PHI Foundation, Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, CA Beyond the post-soviet. Displaced Heritage. Reader 1, publication, co-director, with the support of Cnap and MCA, FR Grimoire of the Lost Ampersand, performance by Madison Bycroft, curated performance (as part of BTSPS), CURA / Maison de la culture d’Amiens, Amiens, FR |
| 2025 | Writing residency, İMALAT-HANE Sanat Mekânı, Bursa—Istanbul, TR Curatorial research residency, Secant Space, Istanbul, TR |
| 2024-2025 | Déplacement et torrents – Là où le Dnipro et l’Elbe se rencontrent, solo exhibition, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France; House of Arts, Ústí nad Labem, CZ Borders Are Nocturnal Animals, sound archive and artistic collaboration, Palais de Tokyo et Kadist, Paris, France; Center for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, LT |
| 2024 | Collateralities, public space intervention, Reading for Palestine—Paris / قراءات لفلسطين and Sasha Baydal, Paris, FR |
| 2023-2026 | Grey Is the Cube, Blue the Ellipse, visual arts program, curated by: Btps, in the frame of CURA, on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture of France and the Centre national des arts plastiques, Maison de la culture d’Amiens, Amiens, FR |
| 2023-2024 | Curatorial research residency, program “Cité x Cnap”, Cité internationale des arts, FR |
| 2023 | Cold Case 01 : Arsen Savadov, research & exhibition around the artwork Vital Season by Arsen Savadov, curated by: Sasha Pevak & Anne Cadenet, Capc Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, FR |
| 2022-2023 | Colonialism in Camouflage, public program, curated by Btps, The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg, Mudam, LU Curatorial research fellow, Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), Paris, FR |