Olga Tsaplya Egorova

Olga Tsaplya Egorova is an artist, gardener, educator and film director based in Berlin and Hamburg. She co-founded The Factory of Found Clothes (1995), one of the first feminist art collectives in post-Soviet space. Olga (Tsaplya) is one of the founding members of Chto Delat (What is to be done?, since 2003) – a group of artists, critics, philosophers and writers. The group’s main question is how work at the intersection of art, activism, culture and education can change society, founding the School of Engaged Art.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a criminal case opened against Olga and her husband Dmitry Vilensky that led to the artists’ exile from Russia, Chto Delat the school was transformed into the School of Emergency, which helps politically active artists and cultural workers escape repression in Russia. The first ’emergency’ edition of the school was held at Hagerstensasens Medborgarhus in Stockholm. Now it exists in the form of the Chto Delat emergency project room in Berlin.