Viktor Misiano - Artistic Practices in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Space

Lesson part of the course Decolonised History of Art: Global Narratives from 1900 to the Present. Click here for the programme and the full course.

This lesson examines artistic production across the Soviet and post-Soviet space, considering the negotiation of individual and collective freedoms undertaken by artists during the consolidation of Soviet control, and later their responses to the social and political transformations brought by perestroika, the dissolution of the USSR, and contemporary authoritarian and imperialist policies. Attention is given to non-conformist practices, including the work of the Lianozovo School and artists such as Oskar Rabin, Dmitri Plavinsky, and Vladimir Nemukhin, whose strategies challenged official socialist aesthetics through subtle subversion, poetic allegory, and experimental forms. Sots Art and Moscow Conceptualism, exemplified by artists like Vitali Komar and Alexander Melamid, Ilya Kabakov, and groups such as Collective Action, are discussed for their engagement with appropriation, text, and the reconfiguration of everyday symbols to critique ideological narratives. Russian Actionism and performative interventions, alongside experimental video and new media practices, reveal how ephemeral and provocative actions expanded the possibilities of art beyond traditional formats. Finally, the lesson considers contemporary social and political art, as seen in the work of groups and artists such as Chto Delat, Voina, Pussy Riot, and Pyotr Pavlensky, demonstrating how artistic practices continue to negotiate space, power, and resistance in the post-Soviet context.

Viktor Misiano is a curator, editor and theorist. He has curated multiple artistic institutions and major artistic events, including the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts and the Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He is also the founder of the Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship (Amsterdam). His main research focuses on post-Soviet and East-European contemporary art, and the social and geopolitical role of curatorial practice.