{"id":22518,"date":"2021-03-11T12:11:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T09:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/?p=22518"},"modified":"2021-06-03T13:01:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T10:01:51","slug":"and-this-is-where-art-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/articles\/columns\/and-this-is-where-art-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"And This is Where Art Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The creative work of feminist artists has become the subject of investigations by various forces\u2014aggressive women-haters, opportunistic politicians, nationalist activists, religious figures, and criminal courts\u2014and is viewed by these connoisseurs of the arts as (circle what applies) \u201cdepravity – indecency – pornography – mockery of our national culture \/ traditional values – an affront to national \/ religious \/ other pro-Putin sensibilities.\u201d The result of this attention from such concerned viewers has been various persecutions of female artists, from online bullying and a thorough thrashing in the press to criminal charges and the real threat of physical violence.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian and global human rights organizations have asked Russia\u2019s prosecutor general <\/span>to put an end to the persecution of the artist and activist Yulia Tsvetkova<\/span><\/a> for body-positive \u201cartistic portrayal of the female anatomy dedicated to the openly stated goal of celebrating the beauty of the female body.\u201d The obvious fact that \u201cLiving women have…\u201d periods, body hair, gray hair, and so forth (this is how Tsvetkova signed her drawings, and it was also the name of an exhibition put on by other female artists to support her, <\/span>which was organized by Katrin Nenasheva<\/span>, <\/span><\/a>who was recently <\/span>re-arrested<\/span><\/a>) is so offensive to Russia\u2019s repressive system that Tsvetkova faces a criminal sentence of up to six years for \u201cpornography.\u201d \u201cAnd how would the people persecuting Tsvetkova know that images of the vagina have long hung in museums? This means that we must educate people, organize virtual exhibitions and lectures,\u201d <\/span>said the female artist Aidan Salahova<\/span>,<\/span><\/a> who started a flash mob in support of Tsvetkova in 2020. And she has a point: How would they know?…<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From Yulia Tsvetkova’s project “A woman is not a doll”.
Real women have… body hair, menstruation, fat, wrinkles and graying, imperfect skin, muscles, and that’s ok!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some viewers of the work of Tajik artist <\/span>Marifat Davlatova<\/span><\/a> rejected her work, and not just because the models were nude; they also had an aggressive reaction to the national flavor of her paintings: \u201cI had an exhibition devoted to women in Dushanbe in August 2018. I wanted to show the beauty of the female body, the female soul as a protest against harassment on the streets, violence, and stereotypes. I portrayed women in national costumes. There was a positive reaction, but also negative criticism along the lines of \u2018this girl is sick, she didn\u2019t get married and is enraged that her parents allowed this\u2019 and \u2018things like this cannot be created in our society, girls cannot do that.\u2019 There were also verbal threats (that I should be burned and hung), including from women, and they were entirely real\u2014people threw stones at me on the street several times when they recognized me. One of the main complaints about me was that I portray real women. People would say, \u2018These are our sisters, daughters, future mothers; you have disgraced them.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Work by Marifat Davlatova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alyon Saveleva, an artist from Ufa, was also subjected to harassment, which threatened to move from social media to \u201creality,\u201d because she \u201c<\/span>portrayed<\/span><\/a> various members of society, including sexual minorities, in the national costumes of Bashkiria.\u201d In her words, all she wanted to show through the medium of art was that \u201cMy Bashkiri people are the same as all other peoples, and life here, as I thought, does not differ from the world community.\u201d But the art only went so far before soil and destiny took over. Even though many viewers supported Saveleva, some were shocked by the portrayal of \u201cthe naked bodies of Bashkiri men and women,\u201d and participants in the impassioned discussion (which included nationalist activists, members of the Public Chamber, representatives of political parties, and even the head of the republic) accused her not of \u201canatomy with pornography,\u201d which was the case with Tsvetkova, but of \u201cmockery of the Bashkiri culture,\u201d since the anatomies of the men and women portrayed were covered with \u201celements of the national dress.\u201d The audience was particularly sensitive to pictures of traditional fox hats. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alyon Savelieva “I pity the one to whom the kurai was not sung”<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This story brings to mind another story that is also about hats and women. <\/span>Last year\u2019s March 8 women\u2019s march in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek<\/span><\/a> was disrupted by the local version of the Russian Cossacks and SERBovtsy and Kyrk choro activists wearing ak-kalpaks (the national Kyrgyz head attire for men) after the police failed to act, or, more precisely, abetted. <\/span>\u201c<\/span>I was walking there and saw stones flying at us, and these guys in ak-kalpaks running,<\/span><\/a>\u201d recounted artist Tatyana Zelenskaya, who participated in the march. She expressed her feeling\u2014suffocation from injustice\u2014<\/span>in a bitter and expressive self-portrait<\/span><\/a> where she is being led away by police officers and men in ak-kalpaks are destroying signs and attacking women in the background. Over 70 participants in the Bishkek march spent the worldwide flash mob to fight violence against women, which was held on the streets and in the squares of other countries on March 8, within the walls of a police precinct. <\/span>The actions of people who aggressively oppose gender equality are taking a positive symbol of Kyrgyz culture and transforming it into a symbol of patriarchal violence and the suppression of women. The ak-kalpak\u2019s national holiday, which was officially introduced under a 2016 resolution of the Kyrgyz parliament \u201cto preserve the importance of the national headdress,\u201d is celebrated on March 5, which makes it seem to counterpose women\u2019s day in terms of time. This year it was held on Ala-too Square in Bishkek, while officials <\/span>again failed to authorize<\/span><\/a> the March 8 women\u2019s march, citing the pandemic, which did not appear to interfere with the holiday of men\u2019s national headdress. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artist Tatyana Zelenskaya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2018 ADC Memorial <\/span>drew the attention<\/span><\/a> of the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to how elements of national dress are zealously bestowed with holiness and sometimes even forced on people (in particular, in 2018 the Kyrgyz parliament submitted the draft law \u201cOn Assigning the National Headdress Ak-kalpak the Status of a Cultural Symbol\u201d for public debate. This draft law included clauses such as \u201cThe procedure for wearing an al-kalpak shall be determined by the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic\u201d and \u201cAn ak-kalpak cannot be used for anything other than its designated purpose.\u201d The law also proposed that male civil servants would be required to wear it and stipulated liability for \u201cdesecration\u201d of the al-kalpak). At the same time, national dress is already popular in Kyrgyzstan\u2014many people wear it with pleasure and at their own will, and human rights defenders have reported cases where it has been imposed and rejected (for example, in Osh Oblast, where a large percentage of the population is comprised of Uzbeks, the regional leadership forced schoolteachers to wear clothing with national Kyrgyz elements during work hours). <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cmale state,\u201d as represented by the eponymous group of women-haters and by other natural and legal persons, feels the full support of the state, and sometimes it seems that it acts at the orders of and certainly with the silent agreement of the latter, as was the case with the March 8 march in Bishkek or <\/span>the threat against the female artist and activist Darya Serenko<\/span>,<\/span><\/a> who launched a \u201cDay of Solidarity\u201d with Yulia Navalnaya and female political prisoners during the recent protests. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The chain of solidarity with the Belarusians in front of the Belarusian Embassy in Moscow, August 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many of our female contemporaries are forced to live in the suffocating circumstances of the \u201cmale state.\u201d Regardless of what side of the Caucasian or Ural ridge we\u2019re on, this is our shared reality\u2014when the police respond to domestic violence and promise to come only \u201cwhen there\u2019s a corpse,\u201d when television programs transmit the embodiment of traditional values in the form of <\/span>the forced marriage of a schoolgirl<\/span><\/a>, when <\/span>mothers are not allowed to raise their children<\/span><\/a>: \u201cOnce upon a time, I don\u2019t know in what century, a shepherd in a sheepskin hat who had sent his sheep to graze, sat down beside the fire and started coming up with fantastic stories, traditions, <\/span>adats, <\/span>where the woman is essentially not a person. Women aren\u2019t worth anything here in Chechnya. Women have many rights under Islam, but actually for us, for the Nakh peoples, for Chechens and the Ingush, women are purely incubators, cleaners, servants, and nothing more. So you come into a family, you bear children, but these are not your children. They belong to the last name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour body is a battleground\u201d\u2014this is the oft-cited yet timely slogan of a Barbara Kruger silkscreen (1989), and this is far from a theoretical battleground\u2014for the right of women to life, to liberty, and to art.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olga Abramenko<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The creative work of feminist artists has become the subject of investigations by various forces\u2014aggressive women-haters, opportunistic politicians, nationalist activists, religious figures, and criminal courts\u2014and is viewed by these connoisseurs of the arts as (circle what applies) \u201cdepravity – indecency…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-longread.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[565,362],"tags":[208],"strategy_cases":[],"campaign":[],"archive":[],"filter-content":[],"regions":[441,515,158],"class_list":["post-22518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-columns","tag-womens-rights-en","regions-kyrgyzstan","regions-russia","regions-tajikistan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-e1615455964234.jpg",960,960,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-125x125.jpg",125,125,true],"medium":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-768x768.jpg",640,640,true],"large":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-500x500.jpg",500,500,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-e1615455964234.jpg",960,960,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-e1615455964234.jpg",960,960,false],"pub-thumb":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-220x220.jpg",220,220,true],"post-thumb":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-170x170.jpg",170,170,true],"wcicon":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-48x48.jpg",48,48,true],"wcsquare":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"wcsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-250x250.jpg",250,250,true],"wcstandard":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-550x550.jpg",550,550,true],"wcbig":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-800x800.jpg",800,800,true],"wcfixedheightsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-180x180.jpg",180,180,true],"wcfixedheightmedium":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"wcfixedheight":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-500x500.jpg",500,500,true],"wccarouselsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-210x150.jpg",210,150,true],"wccarousel":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-400x285.jpg",400,285,true],"wcslider":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cvetkova-960x500.jpg",960,500,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"

The creative work of feminist artists has become the subject of investigations by various forces\u2014aggressive women-haters, opportunistic politicians, nationalist activists, religious figures, and criminal courts\u2014and is viewed by these connoisseurs of the arts as (circle what applies) \u201cdepravity – indecency – pornography – mockery of our national culture \/ traditional values – an affront to national \/ religious \/ other pro-Putin sensibilities.\u201d The result of this attention from such concerned viewers has been various persecutions of female artists, from online bullying and a thorough thrashing in the press to criminal charges and the real threat of physical violence. Russian and…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Articles<\/a>, Columns<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"admin3","url":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/author\/admin3\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","amp_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23071,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22518\/revisions\/23071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"strategy_cases","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strategy_cases?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"campaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campaign?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"filter-content","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter-content?post=22518"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=22518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}