Elina Kulikova was born in St Petersburg. She is a theatre director, performance artist and writer in exile, currently based in Switzerland. She works mainly with auto-fiction and documentary performance, writing, directing and performing herself. Elina has participated in international theatre festivals and labs, been nominated for national theatre awards in her home country and directed more than 15 shows in Russia, USA, France, Estonia and Switzerland.
In 2019, she graduated from St Petersburg State University and Bard College (NY, USA) with a major in Arts and a minor in Human Rights. She is now a MA student at La Manufacture Lausanne, specializing in theatre directing.
Until 2022, her goal was to develop contemporary and politically charged theatre in her country, challenging the patriarchal and imperialist narrative that threatens freedom and human rights. But in February 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Elina left Russia under propagandist attack to continue her artistic and human rights work abroad. She has already created several anti-war projects and continues working on often harrowing themes of war crimes, state repression and state gender violence.
