The Belarusian Free Theater, an underground theater group that has been in exile since 2020, announced on Wednesday that it will host the exhibition “Official. Unofficial. Belarus.” As an official subsidiary event of the 61st Venice Biennale.
The show will take place on May 9 at the more than 1,000-year-old Evangelical Church of San Giovanni in Venice, with a pre-opening during opening week, May 6-8. It will last until November 22nd.
Curated by Belarus Free Theater co-founder Natalia Kaliada and artistic projects curator Daniella Kaliada, both of whom have lived in exile in Belarus since 2011, the exhibition “will explore how art is created, censored and experienced under authoritarian power and constant surveillance.”
Related articles
“‘Official. Unofficial. Belarus.’ This shows that the independent culture of Belarus – not the regime – has cultural authority,” Natalia Kalyada said in a statement.
“We, a group of Belarusian artists, now in exile, come from a country that is home to world-class artists, thinkers and cultural innovators, and we are proud to show our homeland to the world through their lens, rather than as defined by the country,” she continued. “Together we form an artistic constellation that cannot be ignored and that no national institution can bring together. We hope that this moment will resonate deeply beyond this year as we look forward to a future in which Belarusian culture will regain its rightful place on the world stage.”
In press materials, the exhibition is described as creating a “twilight zone between spiritual traditions and the totalitarian present,” marked by new site-specific paintings by Sergey Grinevich that serve as altar panels; organ soundscapes, sound of silenceby Olga Podgayskaya; and a nearly nine-foot-tall sphere composed of banned Belarusian books and compressed by a bulldozer claw, designed by Nicolai Khalezin.
The adjacent cemetery will feature a sound installation playing recordings of testimonies from recently released Belarusian political prisoners, juxtaposed with a large sculpture by Vladimir Tsesler made from prison bars. Tsesler’s work reimagines Belarusian straw Payakor “spider”, a folk art form.
The installation conceived by Daniella Kaliada and Natalia Kaliada will be installed outside the church: Surveillance of the Crucifixiona sculptural cross made entirely of CCTV cameras. “This work will collapse the distinction between observer and observed, questioning power dynamics and allowing surveillance into sacred spaces,” press materials read.
Belarus, an Eastern European country bordering Russia and Ukraine, has been ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994 in what has been described as a “brutal and repressive dictatorship.”
Since the BFT’s founding in 2005, Kalyada and her husband Nikolai Kalezin (both human rights activists) have used the theater to criticize and resist Lukashenko’s censorship and policies. In its early years, the band performed in unadvertised private apartments in Belarus and abroad. Kalyada and Kharezin sought political asylum in Britain in 2011 as Lukashenko’s crackdown intensified. They continue to operate BFT from abroad, using Skype to conduct rehearsals with actors in the country’s capital, Minsk. new york times Reported in 2023 Introduction.
In 2020 and 2021, as widespread protests against Lukashenko and the Belarusian government intensified, other members of the troupe were forced into exile. The demonstrations were in response to Lukashenko’s sixth presidential election win, which many claimed involved as much as 60-70% falsification of the results. Many members of the troupe initially fled to Ukraine and then moved to Warsaw, where many remained, working with Ukrainian and Belarusian refugees; others moved to the UK to join Kalyada and Kalezin.
