Photographed by: Aditya Retnanto

Photographed by: Aditya Retnanto

Aleksei is a third-culture queer American fine artist and legal activist.

His work in visual art is a means of understanding and sharing his personal experience with the world, life, and the subconscious. He has worked on multiple series of paintings, illustrations, and prints. Much of his art is practiced through the gestalt theory. The practice in which he paints, draws, and illustrates based from his mind rather than what he physically perceives and imagines. The many parts of his work form a unified image of unconventional beauty that implicitly defies the disparate elements of society and its’ restraints on the human imagination. His artwork has been featured and traveled in public exhibitions including Triangle Park with the Magenta Foundation, Art All Night Pittsburgh, and the Scholastic 2016 Art.Write.Now.Tour National Tour.

Outside of fine art, Aleksei has worked on research projects and policy proposals regarding election-related digital communications and political advertising. His most recent project included pursuing a Fulbright grant where he conducted a research project composed of various focus groups in Brazilian metropolitan areas providing tips and insights to journalists from The New York Times and Revista Fórum covering the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Election. This project was an extension of his initial ethnographic research on alt-right and conservative POC and LGBTQ+ voters in Southeast Brazil after President Bolsonaro’s inauguration in 2019. His work in this arena assisted in developing policies, open-source fact-checking software, and machine-learning models that: improve election-related digital communications and civic engagement, assist in the prosecution of individuals who conspire to spread disinformation, and place accountability, transparency, and much needed regulations on social media platforms.

Aleksei currently does community engagement and public relations work for a public interest law firm that aimlessly works to highlight and reduce barriers for black and lower-income entrepreneurs on the South and West Sides of Chicago that still experience major disinvestment and neglect. He plans to become an attorney practicing entertainment and intellectual property law to defend, empower, and protect lower-income creatives and entrepreneurs.

Aleksei holds a Bachelor of Arts with High Honors from Emory University. He currently lives in Chicago and grew up between New York City, Pittsburgh, and Southern Brazil. His hobbies include jazz dance, boxing, vegan cooking, trying out the latest restaurants, traveling the world, following the latest house DJs, and when he can, spending time with his rescue dog, Natí. He speaks English and Portuguese.