Artistic Practices Across the Soviet and Post-Soviet Space
Art in the Soviet and post-Soviet space unfolds as a history of negotiation between control and autonomy as much as between ideology and imagination. From the poetic subversions of non-conformist painters to the conceptual wit of Sots Art and the radical interventions of Pussy Riot, this lesson traces how artists have continuously redefined the boundaries of freedom. Whether through performance, text, or the politics of the street, their work transforms the struggle against domination into a creative and ethical act of persistence.
This lesson examines artistic production across the Soviet and post-Soviet space, considering the negotiation of individual and collective freedoms undertaken by artists during the consolidation of Soviet control, and later their responses to the social and political transformations brought by perestroika, the dissolution of the USSR, and contemporary authoritarian and imperialist policies. Attention is given to non-conformist practices, including the work of the Lianozovo School and artists such as Oskar Rabin, Dmitri Plavinsky, and Vladimir Nemukhin, whose strategies challenged official socialist aesthetics through subtle subversion, poetic allegory, and experimental forms. Sots Art and Moscow Conceptualism, exemplified by artists like Vitali Komar and Alexander Melamid, Ilya Kabakov, and groups such as Collective Action, are discussed for their engagement with appropriation, text, and the reconfiguration of everyday symbols to critique ideological narratives. Russian Actionism and performative interventions, alongside experimental video and new media practices, reveal how ephemeral and provocative actions expanded the possibilities of art beyond traditional formats. Finally, the lesson considers contemporary social and political art, as seen in the work of groups and artists such as Chto Delat, Voina, Pussy Riot, and Pyotr Pavlensky, demonstrating how artistic practices continue to negotiate space, power, and resistance in the post-Soviet context.
March 11, 2026 - from 6 PM to 8 PM CET.
