BOOK : DESCENT INTO THE MARSH

This book serves as a visual archive of a pivotal moment in Belarusian history, documenting the 2020-2021 protests while drawing parallels with the 2019-2020 Hong Kong movement.

Published in late 2024, just before Belarus’s 2025 elections, it highlights ongoing repression, with thousands of political prisoners and around a million people forced to flee. The author connects the protests in Belarus and Hong Kong as examples of modern resistance shaped by digital control and China's geopolitical influence.

The seven chapters, illustrated with photographs from Belarus and Hong Kong, explore common tactics and symbols: gestures of unity, the symbolic use of colour, and objects such as umbrellas that represent protection and resilience. Artistic expressions, such as Hong Kong's Lennon Walls and Belarusian courtyards, highlight grassroots creativity and the importance of ephemeral protest spaces. The leaderless, decentralised nature of both movements highlights their adaptability. Hong Kong's "Be Water" strategy and Belarus's horizontal organising emphasise collective action while evading authoritarian crackdowns.

The book also examines the exchange of repressive practices between the regimes in China and Belarus, focusing on the role of surveillance technologies. The combination of modern surveillance with traditional methods of intimidation points to the evolving challenges facing protest movements.

While neither movement achieved its immediate political goals, both left a lasting impact on cultural and societal transformation. "Descent into the Marsh" is a visual document of protest that highlights the universal human quest for freedom and dignity. The book functions as an open archive, regularly updated with new media articles and reflections on ongoing struggles, providing a lasting record of unfinished events that remain unblocked and uncensored online.

As Lesia Pcholka speaks about her project:

“Archives in Belarus are highly unstable: social media spaces are controlled, most independent Belarusian media websites are blocked, and all news posted on their sites disappear. We remember fragments, but we cannot find a source that describes the details. Symbols, slogans, gestures, colours—something will appear in this book. Articles about the protest that once appeared on the Facebook feed will have their own place on these pages. This book serves as a visual document of the protest movements in Hong Kong from 2019 to 2020 and in Belarus from 2020 to 2021. It’s a work in progress. New links will appear in the form of stickers, and the ones here may become obsolete. Because in 2024 nothing ended. In this book, I combine photos I took in Belarus in 2020a country I cannot yet return to—and photos from 2024 in Hong Kong, a place I could visit to find empty streets and an everyday life that bears only faint traces of the protest movement.”

ISBN 978-3-00-081038-1

AUTHOR : Lesia Pcholka
EDITOR : Black Seeds in Hong Kong
PROJECT CURATOR : Katarzyna Zielinska / zusa gGmbH
DESIGN : Karolina Pietrzyk, Tobias Wenig

TYPEFACES: KTF Concrete, KTF Prima
PRINTING : Drukmania s.c., Poland
PAPER COVER : Crush Coffee 350g
PAPER INSIDE : Magno Volume 115 g
EDITION : 250 copies

PHOTOS : Belarus, 2020 and Hong Kong, 2024
FOR THE IMAGE : © All rights reserved, Lesia Pcholka

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EXHIBITIONS

LIMINARIUM. Performensk at PlatformB.
Stuttgart, Germany. 2023

One of the symbols of prosthesis were flowers. Even though criticism arose, suggesting that Belarusians should have taken up arms instead of offering flowers after the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine, these symbols were carefully chosen to reflect the majority's stance against violence. Lesia, as an artist, reconstructs this imagery, continuing the mythological narrative while altering the context in which these flowers appear. Through her work, she engages in myth-making that transforms the symbols associated with past political traumas, offering a new perspective, concern, and commitment to choices.

Book Launch: DESCENT INTO THE MARSH. alpha nova & galerie futur
Berlin, Germany. 2025

Lesia Pcholka with Daria Sazanovich, Karen Cheung, Keishi Akashi. Exhibition, reading/lecture, presentation.

Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance.

Kyiv, Ukraine. 2021

On August 15, 2020, cultural workers of Belarus held the action “The Art of the Regime” where they formed a chain of solidarity by the Palace of Arts and held up photos of protesters who had been beaten by the police on August 9–12. Artist Artem Pronin undressed to show the bruises and wounds on his body. After the action, the participants stuck the photographs on the billboard of Art-Belarus Gallery, whose collection had been seized even before the elections. One of paintings from the collection, Chaim Soutine’s “Eva” (1928), has become one of the symbols of the Belarusian protests.

The cultural workers used the action to publicly express their disagreement with the current regime and to demand an end to police violence. This wasn’t the only act of collective resistance by the artistic community: two days before, artists held the action “Don’t Paint — Strike!” to protest against the results of the elections and to express solidarity with the strikes sweeping the country.

Lesia Pcholka, like many other artists, has changed the focus of her practice: in the tense situation photography and documentation of events are becoming important acts of resistance. The Belarusianauthorities are stripping journalists working for foreign media of their accreditations and prohibiting them from covering the events inthe country. Social networks are becoming a new outlet for protest. Echoing the action, documentary photographs are presented in an installation in the form of a solidarity chain aimed at drawing attention to the violence in the country and the legal default that continues in Belarus to this day.