2020-2023
Installation
Installation
Sorting
Railroad maps, acrylic paint (36x54 cm, 8 sheets), artist's book
In 2020 MCA “PERMM” invated me to curate an exhibition at the main Railway Station in Perm. The customer was the Russian railways and theywanted to dedicate this event to the 75th anniversary of the Russian great victory in the WWII.
The thing is that I didn’t want to highlight the merits of the Soviet railroad during thewar, so I did it the other way around. I focused on picturing the period when people and their belongings were taken out of their everyday lives and became tools in the hands of the authorities. The railroad connected the country: trains took soldiers to the battlefield , the wounded − back home, civilians and industry were evacuated away from the fighting as well. After the war, the ROW prisoners returned to the Soviet Union by the same route. Each railroad had a NKVD screening and filtration camp, which conducted interrogations of the former POWs.
The main source for my research was a collection of documents ‘‘Война глазами военнопленных’’ (The War through the Eyes of the Imprisoned) compiled by historian and researcher Oleg Leibovich based on declassified screening cases. I used a list of questions that the interrogators asked POWs.
The interrogation followed a strict methodology: including a life history with civilian and military parts, details of captivity, conditions of detention. Questions checked: background, education, contacts with German services, work in captivity. Any mention of interaction with the enemy raises suspicions of possible recruitment.
Most of the former POWs who passed the filtering process returned to their places of residence and were under constant scrutiny by the omnipresent government authorities. It was only in 1956 that those of them who were still convicted of surrendering to the enemy were amnestied. Full rehabilitation came almost four decades later.
The artwork was approved for display as a part of exhibition in Perm, the higher railway department in Ekaterinburg also gave permission, but the main railway office in Moscow just censored the work without giving a reason.
The thing is that I didn’t want to highlight the merits of the Soviet railroad during thewar, so I did it the other way around. I focused on picturing the period when people and their belongings were taken out of their everyday lives and became tools in the hands of the authorities. The railroad connected the country: trains took soldiers to the battlefield , the wounded − back home, civilians and industry were evacuated away from the fighting as well. After the war, the ROW prisoners returned to the Soviet Union by the same route. Each railroad had a NKVD screening and filtration camp, which conducted interrogations of the former POWs.
The main source for my research was a collection of documents ‘‘Война глазами военнопленных’’ (The War through the Eyes of the Imprisoned) compiled by historian and researcher Oleg Leibovich based on declassified screening cases. I used a list of questions that the interrogators asked POWs.
The interrogation followed a strict methodology: including a life history with civilian and military parts, details of captivity, conditions of detention. Questions checked: background, education, contacts with German services, work in captivity. Any mention of interaction with the enemy raises suspicions of possible recruitment.
Most of the former POWs who passed the filtering process returned to their places of residence and were under constant scrutiny by the omnipresent government authorities. It was only in 1956 that those of them who were still convicted of surrendering to the enemy were amnestied. Full rehabilitation came almost four decades later.
The artwork was approved for display as a part of exhibition in Perm, the higher railway department in Ekaterinburg also gave permission, but the main railway office in Moscow just censored the work without giving a reason.
