I'm Halina Troshyna. I'm from Russia and I'm a PhD graduate in Visual Culture & Curatorial Studies at the Institute of Contemporary Art & Social Thoughts under China Academy of Art's School of Intermedia Art. Art has always been my lifelong pursuit. Because of my aspirations, I traveled to St. Petersburg, a center of world history and culture, after I graduated from high school, to learn Western art history and Chinese. I received a great education there and started looking for opportunities to experience more diverse arts and cultures. To realize my dreams and artistic pursuits, I got into CAA in 2018 and continued my doctoral education there. I thank CAA for nurturing me in the arts and allowing me to pursue intermedia art creation and try new artistic practices while learning Eastern and Western art history. I can tell that my time at CAA will be the most important period in my life. At CAA, we have full access to all classics, be it ancient or contemporary, Eastern or Western. We can apply the principles that we have learned in our lives and achieve self-realization through our artistic creations. Through CAA's international platform, I had the privilege of serving as a member of the curatorial team at China Design Museum for three years. I was involved in the curation of the iconic special exhibition entitled "From Vkhutemas to Visions of the Future: A History of Soviet Design", where I met many world-class designers and artists, participated in academic activities, and bettered myself in the process.

When I decided to do my PhD in China, I was choosing between best universities. In CAA I found SIMA (School of Intermedia Art) and ICAST, with a possibility to do curatorial studies research. This program was exactly what I wanted to do^- make a deep theoretical research but make it practical by organizing exhibitions.

During seminars in ICAST our research group discussed and analyze different topics, had meetings with contemporary scholars/gallery owners/artists in different fields. As ICAST member, I could take part in all main exhibition projects in CAA for the last 5 years like Young to Young (student works exhibition of 2019), ELIA workshop (2019), exhibition on History of Soviet Design in CDM (2022), PLAYSHOP (2022, 2023), and it definitely made me a better and more confident specialist.