Alex Belardo Kostiw’s self-publishing practice, exploring unknown parts and possibilities in our everyday realities. Rooted in visual communication and print, these works deal in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms. ︎info
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︎ Alex Belardo Kostiw
Alex is an artist, graphic designer, and educator in Chicago making comics at the intersection of design and poetry. Their work frames moments when the everyday becomes nebulous; people seek connection across time and space; and the self feels like a stranger. It invites intuitive, multifaceted reading—even as it resists full unravelling.
Alex’s process often involves fragmenting, reframing, and/or combining different perspectives on everyday phenomena, such as reimagining birds as stories based on their names, or creating a sense of place by juxtaposing drawings from memory with old photographs. Through their practice, they guide readers toward fluid meanings in what seems fixed, making space for the familiar to become unknown and unknowable. Alex’s explorations include myth-making, in-betweenness, modes of inter/active reading, and books as installational projects.
Alex is an assistant professor in Visual Communication Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They also teach printmaking at Spudnik Press, a community print shop, and design publications for institutions that center historically underrepresented voices in art and culture.
Alex holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from SAIC and a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago. They live with many reams of paper and two cats.
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︎now / future
2025 Comic Arts Maine Portland (CAMP)expo; Seattle Art Book Fair; Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF).past
Comics, Zine, and Art Book Fairs Boston Art Book Fair; Chicago Art Book Fair; Independent Artist Book Fair, New York; Multiple Formats Art Book Fair, Boston; LA Art Book Fair (virtual); Seattle Art Book Fair; Autoptic, Minneapolis; CAKE, Chicago; CALA, LA; CXC, Columbus, OH; DiNK, Denver; Jersey Art Book Fair, Jersey City, NJ; MICE, Boston;
SLICE, St. Louis;
TCAF, Toronto; Zineland Terrace, Toronto. Exhibitions (*solo/two-person) Chicago Artist Coalition*, Chicago; Co-Prosperity, Chicago*; The Annex at Spudnik Press, Chicago*; Evanston Art Center, Evanston; Carlow University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; Tephra ICA, Tephra, VA; Chicago Design Museum.
Residencies Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency (2023–24); In Cahoots Residency (2022); Spudnik Press Artist Residency (2016–17).