The Art of the Regime

installation based on my photographs


2022 - 2024  

Pole

A photograph of a pole taken in Minsk on a summer Sunday in 2020, during a time of widespread protests against the regime. In the original image, the regime’s red and green flag is present—a symbol that adorned police vehicles and sites of violence and repression. I have manipulated the colors to heighten the sense of oppressive pressure. The object in the photo represents the system of state surveillance and control, capturing the quiet yet suffocating presence of power that overshadowed the lives of those experiencing these events.

Gallery Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv, Ukraine)

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.