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until 20.01. | #4110ARTatBerlin | PSM Gallery shows from 25. November 2023 (Opening: 24.11) the exhibition “Birds with the people” by the artist Marina Naprushkina.
Can a bird song be an act of solidarity within the resistance movement? Despite the poetic form of this question, it has an intrinsically political background. On February 9, 2022, in the wake of ongoing repression and a few weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Belarusian regime liquidated the NGO “Ahova Ptushak Batkaushchyny” (Eng. Protection of Homeland Birds), which had been carrying out ecological and nature conservation activities for almost a quarter of a century. “Birds with the people” is a slogan launched and shared on social media by the NGO during the uprising in Belarus to support the protesters and show solidarity with them.
The slogan became a symbol of resistance against the violence in the patriarchal state. Moreover, it highlights the widespread use of repressive tactics by authoritarian regimes, which extend from the political to the private sphere, and affect humans and non-humans, silencing the voices and destroying ecosystems.
For her first gallery show in Berlin, Naprushkina brings together her recent works (installation, video, paintings and text) to create a complex, multi-layered narrative, through a feminist lens and decolonial practices, Naprushkina situates the history of resistance against the regime in Belarus in a global context.
The exhibition is accompanied by a text and a glossary by Antonina Stebur.
Marina Naprushkina is an artist, feminist and activist. Her diverse artistic practice includes video, performance, drawing, installation, and text. Naprushkina is mostly working outside institutional spaces, in cooperation with communities and activist organizations. Naprushkina focuses on creating new formats, structures, and organizations based on self-organization and overlaps in theory and practice.
In 2007 she founded the Office for Anti Propaganda which critically challenged the power structures inherent in nation-states. Naprushkina co-founded in 2013 the Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit initiative, which aims to create a strong community of people with and without migration and asylum background. Naprushkina received the ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture (2017) and the Sussmann Artist Award (2015). She participated a.o. in the Kyiv Biennial (2023 and 2017), the 7th Berlin Biennial (2011), 11th Istanbul international Biennial (2009). Together with Nadira Husain, Naprushkina is a part of a professorial duo at the Universität der Künste Berlin.
Antonina Stebur is a curator, researcher and art critic. She is co-founder of the #damaudobnayavbytu project on gender discrimination in post-Soviet countries and co-founder and curator of antiwarcoalition.art – The International Coalition of Cultural Workers in Solidarity with Ukraine. She is a co-curator of the exhibitions “Every Day. Art. solidarity. Resistance” (Ukraine, 2021), “Names” (Belarus, 2017), “I Was Approaching the City I Had Not Known Yet” (Ukraine, 2021), “If Disrupted It Becomes Tangible” (Lithuania, 2023), and others. In 2023 Antonina launched the research laboratory “Grybnitca” studying colonial dependencies and decolonial practices in Belarus. She worked as a guest lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and European Humanities University.
Opening: Friday, 24. November 2023, 6 – 10 pm, with DJane Ludmila Pogodina and food and drinks for all
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 25. November 2023 – Saturday, 20. January 2024
To the gallery
Image caption: courtesy PSM Gallery, Marina Naprushkina
Exhibition Marina Naprushkina – PSM Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
