If painters Narine Zolyan and Harutyun Zulumyan were in Moscow now,
the wife and husband would likely be sitting in a court dock as
defenders.
The artists are facing criminal charges for an exhibition they put on last year in Russia.
The exhibition, entitled “Beware, Religion!” featured the work of 40
painters from several countries, whose installations commented on
religion.
The show was supposed to run for 20 days at the Andrey Sakharov Center,
but on the third day, a mob of religious zealots attacked the
exhibition, spraying paint onto some of the pieces and spraying onto
the walls: “You are cursed! You hate orthodoxy!” Police had to come to
the center to disburse the angry mob.
Among the works attacked was Zolyan’s video in which she, wearing
black, constantly writes over a saying of a Zen Buddhist monk’s words:
“I am the only one in the sky and under the sky who deserves honor.”
Then she washes the words away and with the clean fabric forms
handrails. Over the remnants of Zolyan’s exhibit, vandals wrote
“sacrilege”. (Click here to see images
http://warrax.croco.net/77/expo.html)
A court in Moscow acquitted the vandals of charges and then initiated a
case against organizers of the exhibition, charging them with creating
ethnic and religious discord.
A trial began on November with three of the organizers in court, while
Zolyan and Zulumyan are in Yerevan, hoping to avoid prosecution.
“My disgust for Moscow has turned into fear,” Zolyan says.
The couple moved to Moscow in 1993. They participated in and organized
a series of exhibitions and taught fine arts in an art school.
The opening of the court case has come during a public crusade against
the artists. Well-known Russian intellectuals and spiritual figures
issue statements condemning the exhibition. One statement signed by
writers Valentin Rasputin, Vasiliy Belov, film director Nikita
Mikhalkov and other famous people says what the organizers did is worse
than Soviet-era attacks on religion. “Here there is well-thought
Satanism, its new stage,” it reads. “Here an insult has been caused to
national sacred things, orthodoxy, the Russian people, the faith of our
fathers, to Russia itself.”
Seven artists (including the organizers) were Armenian. A commentary in
a Moscow newspaper called on the Armenian community to “think very
seriously about officially condemning the activities of the painters.”
It is not the first case that a campaign is waged against artists in
Russia. In 1998, another painter of Armenian origin, Avdei Ter-Oganyan
chopped about ten paper icons with an axe during a performance at one
exhibition. A criminal case was instituted, however Ter-Oganyan managed
to escape to the Czech Republic. He sent his work to the “Beware,
Religion!” exhibition as a Czech citizen, where he engraved “40º”,
revolution, Russian vodka, Lenin on the edges of the copies of icons.
The work showed that orthodoxy replaces the idea of communism.
“The quality of the exhibition is not important for us, what was
important was the thought that was to be voiced,” says Zolyan.
“Religion is a serious problem in Russia today. There are no ideas and
they want to fill in the vacuum with religion, consequently religion
becomes aggressive. Everywhere, in the subways, in the streets
religious literature is sold next to porn magazines, vodkas bear the
images of churches. Spiritual leaders stand next to high-ranking state
officials. The exhibition was not intended to insult the religious
feelings of the faithful. The issue of religion had a creative, social,
philosophical and civil direction and it was from that viewpoint that
the artists tried to approach the phenomenon of religion.”
Very few people could visit the exhibition during the three days, but it made big news in Russia.
Even the Duma made a statement demanding that the Prosecutor’s Office
should open criminal proceedings. Two months after the exhibition
Moscow’s Taganka Prosecutor’s Office instituted a criminal case, which
threatens the painters with two to five years in prison.
Experts from the Prosecutor’s Office give an 80-page conclusion in
which the exhibition was qualified as sacrilege and disrespect for God.
Amid widespread attacks the painters had some protection though. In the
“Index” monthly (http://index.org.ru/journal/20/riklin20.html Russian
philosopher Mikhail Riklin called the expert conclusion a new science,
“pogromology”, which he says is more dangerous than censorship:
“Instead of restraining extremists and protecting the law, a
considerable part of the state machinery and mass media, on the
contrary, take the extremists under their protection and restrain the
law, giving it an arbitrary interpretation. Now they are fighting for
orthodoxy with methods very reminiscent of those with the aid of which
they were fighting against it during the Soviet times.”
The trial at Moscow’s Taganka court is now continuing. The defenders plead not guilty.
Zulumyan wanted to go to the trial: “I didn’t want to leave Samadurov
(Director of the Sakharov Center) alone.” However, Zulumyan has no
place or means to live in Moscow now, besides he was advised both by
his friends from Moscow and by his wife against going.
Zolyan says that Moscow has become a detestable city for her where she
feels like a hunted beast. People looking like Caucasians are stopped
and humiliated every second and the nationalists are freely spreading
their ideas and it gets more dangerous day by day. She does not intend
to go to Moscow any time soon, even though her mother and daughter are
there:
“Skinheads stage demonstrations unimpeded, and I am supposed to be
responsible for my face, that I look like a Chechen. It is written on
my face – litso kavkazskoi natsionalnosti (in Russian – a person of
Caucasian nationality). Moscow was not like this during the Soviet
times (Zolyan graduated from the Moscow Arts Academy), it was not like
this five years ago.”
One of her latest works is a series of photographs: there is the author
on the central photograph covered with a black oriental veil, her
finger on her lips – shush; on the other photos are signings – don’t
speak. “A woman, or generally an oriental person is mute in Russia, has
no right to engage in arts,” she explains.
The artists will continue to create in Armenia. But they say Armenian artists, unlike the Russians, are detached from reality:
“Armenia is like a house mourning a dead person, there is neither life
nor fervor here. There is no life outside the family,” Zolyan says.