Oleg Mavromatti - Blasphemy as Institutional Critique

ways of seeing religious offense in post-Soviet art and culture wars

Darja Filippova

Chris Burden, Trans-Fixed, 1974 

Avdei Tero-Oganian, Young Non-Believer, 1998

Maurizio Catellan,

La Nona Hora, 1999

 image from Danish newspaper

Flemming Rose

"They went into a church of a religion that continues to hate women; it denies us rights over our bodies. [...] It is a feminist case and it is a humanist case."

-excerpt From Pussy Riot Solidarity Rally, Chicago, 2012

Careful, Religion! (2006) BEFORE/AFTER

exhibition view.

Artwork: Alisa Zakhrevskaya. 

"Do not make yourself idols." (Second image is vandalized with "Assholes.")

Oleg Mavromatti, Do Not Believe Your Eyes, 2000

Oleg Mavromatti, Ally/Foe, 2010

In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture and that of protest culture, thus suggesting to     smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia.

                          – Ekaterina Samutsevich of Pussy Riot