Start here: a map of me
A personal introduction and a look at my roots, my work in tech, my art, and the experiences that shape this digital garden.
Updated on [published on ]
Where my worlds meet
My name is Zarema Khalilova. For a long time, I treated my identities as separate lives, stored in different boxes. This digital garden is the place where they all meet.
I am a:
- Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience.
- Contemporary Artist and Collector processing my history and environment.
- Community Builder who brings people and ideas together through events and talks.
- Neurodivergent Researcher who loves a deep-dive.
- Kabardian.
Me on stage at MoscowJS 50 event in 2021 with the talk “So what next?” about my career and art.
Places that shaped me
My story is a map of places. It starts in the industrial city of Norilsk, in the Far North of Russia, under a sky that was mostly grey. My teens were spent in the Caucasus, where I found my first community of creative misfits and started my university journey in computer science.
The largest part of my life was lived in Saint Petersburg. It’s where I left university to build a career, where I lost my father and then my mother, and where a stray orange cat named Misha joined my life. He’s been my traveling companion ever since.
Misha, my cat.
On the third day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I left Russia. First for Cyprus, and now I live in Tbilisi, Georgia. This forced migration was also an awakening. It’s how I finally saw the true color of the sky and understood the meaning of freedom.
My builder side
My career in tech has been a cycle of building, losing, and rebuilding. Here are a few of the milestones:
- I co-founded a web agency that went bankrupt, but from the ashes, I built my first startup, EventCRM, a SaaS for event managers, only to lose it after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea triggered a banking crisis.
- I reimagined my career, focusing on frontend, and worked with great companies like Uploadcare, RealAdvisor, 3commas, and Lido.
- I poured my energy into community, building SPB Frontend into the big local meetup and helping launch the HolyJS conference.
Now, after all that, I feel the pull again. I want to build my own path.
My art and collecting
In 2021, I started collecting contemporary art. Inspired by the book A Poor Collector’s Guide to Buying Great Art by Erling Kagge, I began my collection by acquiring pieces directly from living artists, galleries, and at art auctions, first focusing on Russian artists, then Cypriot and Greek.
Then, in 2023, I had a realization: I am an artist, too.
My debut solo exhibition in Limassol, “Do you love the color of the sky?”, was built from high-quality prints of my photographs to materialize my journey from the grey world to the bright one.
My first exhibition layout.
Currently, my work is evolving. I’m focusing on more tactile media, creating a series of small collages with paper.
Why I built this space
This digital garden is my solution to the pressure of choosing a niche. It is a home for all of my selves and the space where I actively explore tech, art, and identity.
The person who can spend an evening learning to cook Osetian pies is the same person who can learn data analytics in a couple of months (plus one skill, hehe). The person who loves staying in a fancy hotel also knows what it’s like to lose everything. The person who wants to learn the Kabardian language of her ancestors is the same person who dreams of returning to Bangkok someday.
This is my corner of the web. I’m glad you’re here 🩷