Performance and Concept
a Los Angeles–based performance and conceptual artist bridging theater, movement, technology, and social inquiry
BIO
Alina Kalinouskaya is a Los Angeles–based performance and conceptual artist whose practice bridges theater, movement, technology, and social, political, and philosophical inquiry.
Originally from Belarus, Kalinouskaya began her professional career as an attorney, practicing copyright litigation and providing legal assistance to victims of domestic violence. She is a recipient of the Chevening Award (UK Leadership Award for Young Professionals) and an Excellence Certificate from the bar association.
After relocating to Los Angeles, she transitioned into performance and media art. Her early work includes the immersive experimental noir theater production Adios, Dolores, directed by Charley Gallay. She subsequently spent several years performing as a street artist across Los Angeles, developing a practice rooted in movement, circus techniques, improvisational acting, and direct audience engagement.
Her embodied practice is grounded in long-term physical and visual training. Kalinouskaya graduated from music school with a specialization in violin and, from childhood, regularly served as an art model for her sister, who studied at art school. In Los Angeles, she has also modeled for body art artist, further extending her engagement with the body as an artistic medium.
Kalinouskaya’s work merges contemporary modalities with classical and traditional movement vocabularies and is informed by her diverse ethnic background, including Belarus, Ukrainian, Polish, Roma, Tatar, and Ottoman lineages.
In 2024, she created and performed The Vitruvian Human at the Lois Lambert Gallery at Bergamot Station Arts Center, later transforming the work into a life-sized, full-motion color hologram presented at the iEXCEL Holographic Theater. These presentations were part of the DNA Festival Santa Monica and included in Getty’s Pacific Standard Time (PST) Art Initiative.
She also collaborated with Michael J. Masucci on the video artwork Transparency Alley, examining government secrecy, media manipulation, and public perception surrounding UAP phenomena. The work was curated as part of The Analog Brain series at the Lois Lambert Gallery within Getty PST and DNA Festival Santa Monica.
Not all of Kalinouskaya’s work is intended for public viewing. Influenced by early Los Angeles performance artists such as Barbara T. Smith, she developed the silent performance project 90 Days of Poor People’s Diet, addressing economic precarity and global poverty within her professional network.
Most recently, she premiered Black Cat at the REDCAT / CalArts Theater, opening the retrospective exhibition Vertical Blanking & EZTV.
Following the presentations of The Vitruvian Human and Black Cat, she realized a series of public performance actions staged in prominent urban locations across Los Angeles, including Hollywood & Highland Boulevard, the Central Plaza of Chinatown Los Angeles, Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, and in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). These site-responsive works positioned the body within highly visible civic, cultural, and touristic spaces, testing proximity, attention, and modes of public encounter outside institutional frameworks.
She is currently working on Pavuk (Eng. – Spider), a collective art installation and durational performance built around the creation of a traditional Ukrainian Pavuk—a suspended straw structure symbolizing cosmic balance, protection, and the interconnectedness of human life. Kalinouskaya initiated the project and co-creates it in collaboration with Michael J. Masucci and Olena Yara.
PERFORMANCES
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