Street Art Battle

My name is Ulyana Nevzorova. I live and work as a visual artist in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. In my most recent works, I try to process the political events in my country. I’ve spent my whole life in a dictatorship. At this point, my role as a citizen and my artistic practice overlap. Here are some examples of my actions from last year.

1

This graffiti was painted on a transformer house in a residential area of Minsk. I didn’t make it myself, but I’ve always been very interested in street art. I photographed the work to archive it, because all graffiti in Belarus are painted over by the municipal utilities company. That’s censorship in public spaces, so to speak. I wanted to save this image from oblivion with my camera.

2

This is what it looks like when the municipal utilities company detects protest graffiti and paints over it.

3

When my sister and I noticed the overpainting, we decided to contribute and change the mural further. The whitered-white flag, the former national flag that Lukashenko abolished in 1995, is a symbol of the opposition and the current protests.

4

The red and green flag, which has been the Belarusian national flag since 1995, represents Lukashenko’s regime. This is how an unknown person reacted to our intervention and painted over the protest flag.

5

The answer from my sister and me came promptly.

6

This version of the painting was damaged in a rather brutal way.

7

STRIKE

Subsequently, we completed the scratched picture with information about the strikers and persecuted people of the protest movement in Belarus. We counted more than 14,000 detainees, more than 450 allegations of torture, 6 deaths of protesters and 0 cases filed against police officers.

The residents of Belarus received the following text message from the government:

“Dear citizens! The Ministry of Internal Affairs informs you that any form of graffiti and painting in public spaces will result in criminal prosecution and up to 12 years in prison.”

In response to this notification, I graffitied the content of the text message in a public place in Minsk, adding the protesters’ motto: Жыве Беларусь! (Freedom for Belarus!).

People holding something in their hands during a protest – a poster, a flag, no matter what it was or what message it conveyed – were primarily targeted by the police and were the first to be attacked. That’s what I wanted to address with my action.

The action did not take more than a minute. That’s how long the train takes from one station to the next. But a lot happened during that time. My action became a real happening. I stood there silently while my sister filmed. There were many reactions, some positive, others negative, culminating in a brawl. My sister was even attacked.

Suddenly the man behind me, who was not part of my team at all, pulled the white-red-white flag with the old national emblem of Belarus out of his pocket and thus brought my action to a coherent conclusion.

But the action did not end there. My sister was prosecuted by the authorities for this alleged administrative offence. On 12 November 2020, my flat was searched in connection with the criminal proceedings against my sister Maria Kalenik under Article 342, para. 1. Maria is incarcerated as a political prisoner to this day.

During the house search, the poster was found and confiscated. Before she was arrested, Maria said that the poster belonged to her. The text “This poster might become the reason for my detention” was recorded in the report – and has therefore gone down in police history. As the proceedings against my sister are still ongoing, the poster is still confiscated and kept by the investigating authorities. But I haven’t lost hope that it will return to me once more.

This action took place in a Minsk underground train. The sheet of paper reads: “This poster might become the reason for my detention.”

And this is a fact.