When urban artist Philippenzo (39 years old, Volgograd, Russia) found a wanted notice from the police when he arrived home, he knew that his life was going to change course.
Hours earlier, in the midst of the patriotic celebration of Russia Day, on June 12, 2023, he created a mural under the Elektrozavodskiy Bridge in Moscow with the word
izrossilovaniye
(a play on letters that forms the sentence “Russia rapes you”).
Philippenzo turned off his cell phone and the next morning, dressed in glasses and a cap, he escaped on a flight to Georgia.
“The work alludes to Putin's abuses against his own citizens and against Ukraine,” he explains to EL PAÍS.
It is one of the dozens of stories of persecution and repression suffered by Russian artists who dare to create works critical of the invasion of Ukraine or that question the Russian Government, as told by several of the creators who are exhibiting, from this Wednesday until March 24, the
Brainwashing
exhibition at La Zona Gallery in Madrid.
“Propaganda spreads that whoever goes against the Government, goes against Russia.
"That the West is the enemy and they are children of the devil who hate us," explains one of the organizers and curators of the exhibition, who prefers to keep her identity anonymous for fear of reprisals.
She says that the idea of putting on the exhibition arose from several experiences with friends or people who “have suffered brainwashing”: “I have a cousin that you can't talk to, it's like he's under a spell.
He always repeats the same thing, no matter what data and facts you tell him about the war, you can't make him change his mind,” recalls her, who was a museum guide and has lived in Madrid for two years.
Through some 30 works – paintings, embroidery, ceramics, installations or digital art – by artists who are part of the so-called “black list” of the Kremlin Ministry of Culture, the exhibition itinerary emulates the phases of a washing machine to illustrate indoctrination processes.
More information
The Kremlin's information war: when lies are the weapon
The first section is called “pre-washing” and refers to the elimination of all external sources of information: “Nothing from CNN, Deutsche Welle, Instagram or TikTok, just state channels repeating the same thing.”
This is followed by the “main wash” sections, the propaganda message;
“clarified”, in which real complaints of treason made among the same citizens are reproduced;
“centrifuged” (“there is a sea of hoaxes in which the truth is lost”), and finally “drying”, which refers to prison or death for dissidents, the fate of opponents such as Vladimir Golovliov or Alexei Navalny.
The work 'Without a signal', by Philippenzo, in a photograph provided by the artist.
Restrictions on freedom of opinion began at the beginning of the century, when Vladimir Putin took power and forced the closure of several independent channels, but they have intensified since the start of the war, according to another of the organizers and former journalist.
“War is used to repress freedom of expression with laws [such as the law on false information about the armed forces or the National Security Strategy regulation].
Either you join the State or you change your job,” she relates.
Pavel Otdelnov (Dzerzhinsk, 44 years old), another creator exhibiting in the exhibition, was one of the first artists to protest against the invasion of Ukraine.
A week after the military attack, he stood in front of a supermarket in Moscow holding a sign that said: “This is crazy.”
Previously, in 2015, Otdelnov had already referred to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 with the piece
Unheimlich
, one of those that make up
Brainwashing
.
In it, he uses a traditional Soviet-era rug illustrated with soldiers and other war elements.
“I wasn't in prison for any of those actions, but I thought a second or third time would land me in jail.
I feel responsible for my family and for my own life, I don't want to spend my life behind bars and I want to think freely, that's why I decided to leave the country," says Otdelnov, who has traveled from England to Madrid to present the exhibition, which also It has the presence of guest artists from Spain, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Thailand and with the collaboration of Marat Gelman, one of the most important and oldest gallery owners in Russia, who has been classified by the Government as a “foreign agent”.
The fear of consequences that Otdelnov refers to is the common denominator in the discourse of all the artists who participate in
Brainwashing
.
Fear of revealing too much personal data, of losing your job, of what might happen to family members who stayed in Russia.
The exhibition begins with a piece that replicates an eye chart in which “fear” is the first word that can be read and “freedom” is the least distinguishable.
“Every time we produce something, we feel that something bad is going to happen to us, so this work reflects the main feeling we have at the moment,” explains the author of the work, Anastasya Vladychkina (Izhevsk, 30 years old), a member of the duo Yav Art Group.
View of the exhibition.Álvaro García
Philippenzo, whose real name is Filipp Kozlov, traces the origins of this fear.
“We received it by inheritance from our parents and grandparents.
The fear of the 60 years of totalitarianism and the repressive machinery that operated in the Soviet Union has not yet been overcome.
"No Russian feels confident seeing a person in uniform."
Fear may also be the root of the prevailing self-censorship, the greatest method of repression, according to the artists in the exhibition.
Those on the Kremlin's "blacklist" are prohibited from exhibiting in any museum or public institution, while private galleries risk being denounced.
“Why is propaganda so successful?
Maybe because he says what people want to hear, that their country is great, that they are on the right side of history,” reflects Otdelnov.
The second piece that he exhibits in Madrid is
Abyss Shadow
(Abyssal Shadow), in which he recreates the tens of thousands of people who attended Stalin's funeral under a kind of black hole.
“I was wondering why autocracy is so popular, why it is important for people to believe in some kind of saint.”
As present as the fear of imprisonment is the fear of not being able to return to the country of origin.
“We always talk about when and in what situations we will return to Russia, but no one knows how to answer, only that it will be after Putin,” says urban artist Slava Ptrk (Yekaterinburg, 34 years old).
He brings to the exhibition
The Steps
, a drawing of a minefield based on the game Minesweeper: “It represents the anxiety of living in Russia these days, I am not unpatriotic for criticizing the Government.”
Otdelnov agrees with him: “Putin tries hard to make people believe that he is Russia.
It is not like this.
“I am proud to be Russian.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_