Victoria Lomasko was born in Serpukhov, Russia in 1978. An artist and journalist, Lomasko is the author of Other Russias (n+1 Books, 2017) and the coauthor of Forbidden Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Europe and in the United States. She lived in Moscow until March 2022 and now lives in exile. In 2019, Lomasko spent two weeks at Miami completing her mural “Atlases,” which now hangs on the third floor of King Library.
Her latest book – and the focus of the event – is entitled The Last Soviet Artist (n+1 Books, 2025). In this powerful chronicle of change and resistance, Lomasko takes the measure of the post-Soviet space in the late Putin years. The Last Soviet Artist opens with a series of beautifully illustrated trips to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus, where Lomasko interviews a long list of varied subjects (artists, activists, teachers, senior citizens, schoolchildren), about gender rights, grassroots politics, and the ghosts of the Soviet past. In the book’s second section, Lomasko depicts with great immediacy the drama of the Belarusian revolution and attends the final major protests in Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine—which in turn leads to the third section, written entirely in exile. How do ordinary people navigate historic changes? How do different generations make sense of their shared present? Equally attentive to its interlocutors and their landscapes, The Last Soviet Artist is an unforgettable work of graphic reportage. Winner of the 2022 Pen Catalan Free Voice Award and the 2023 Prix Couilles au Cul pour le Courage Artistique, Festival de BD d’Angoulême.
