Pussy Riot and the cossacks
26 june- 29 september 2014
The exhibition organizers wisely placed art protest, the most typical genre of Russian culture, at the forefront. The selection in the exhibition at Havremagasinet includes the travesty and buffoonish shows of artists who defy authorities in their fight against tyranny. The exhibition deliberately leaves behind political art that is biased, propagandist, and programmed with leftist or rightist discourse, as well as the party’s official version of the present. Unlike political art, protest art does not illustrate collective ideas but rather represents an individual’s emotional reaction to a specific social and political situation imposed by authorities.
Protest art is a response of a person who is aware of their freedom from the state machine and the collective body of the nation, a revolt against the ideas and values imposed by both the authorities and the masses. In Russia, as in any other country with a despotic government that justifies itself with ideological filling, spiritual life is opposed to the authorities.
This opposition arises from the tendency to overcome numerous prohibitions and taboos that essentially revoke the freedom to think and act in non-standard ways. Although this idea is not confined to social horizons, a person’s relationship with the authorities, whether political, economic, or cultural, is also an abiding theme. Detoxification from the effects of propaganda and so-called “traditional values” is the first and most necessary condition for creativity and perception. Russian artists solve this problem with the help of burlesque aesthetics.
Everything around them is ridiculed, including the artists themselves, but most of all, public cults. By degrading everything into absurdities that make the audience laugh involuntarily, authorities lose their sacred power over the people. Protest art is saturated with the spirit of provocative play. Ethical didactic rigorism is replaced by iconic deconstruction, which invites backlash from opponents. This artistic expression is never sanctioned and unequivocally treated by the authorities as ideological and behavioral hooliganism. Therefore, a grim person with a baton, a whip and handcuffs often comes into the picture to interact with the laughing artist.
The exhibition is curated by Andrei Erofeev.
More information can be found in the Folder.
Participating artists
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid
Vicheslav Sisoev
Dmitry Prigov
Boris Orlov
Alexander Kosolapov and Leonid Sokov
Oleg Kulik
Anatoly Osmolovsky and Alexander Brener
Blue Noses and PG groups
Dmitry Bulnigin
Sergey Shekhovtsov
Vladislav Mamishev-Monroe
Semyon Faibisovich
Igor Mukhin
Pussy Riot
Voina and Tsvetophory Groups
Alexey Iorsh
Victoria Lomasko
Artem Loskutov and Vlad Chizhenkov
