{"id":39000,"date":"2025-03-19T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39000"},"modified":"2025-03-19T16:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T16:24:04","slug":"an-artist-traces-her-choices-under-putins-russia-from-resistance-to-retreat-to-exile-one-mural-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/an-artist-traces-her-choices-under-putins-russia-from-resistance-to-retreat-to-exile-one-mural-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"An artist traces her choices under Putin\u2019s Russia \u2013 from resistance to retreat to exile \u2013 one mural at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephen Norris<\/a>, Miami University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victoria Lomasko<\/a>, a graphic artist and muralist, has spent her career documenting how authoritarianism took hold in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. What she has illustrated \u2013 as well as the personal journey she has taken \u2013 affords a chance to see how dictatorship can develop and strengthen across a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, I invited Lomasko \u2013 who goes by Vika for short \u2013 to Miami University, where I teach Imperial Russian and Soviet history<\/a>. The Havighurst Center<\/a> for East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies was holding a semester-long series on \u201cTruth and Power\u201d that also included two other Russian dissidents: Leonid Volkov<\/a>, then chief of staff for opposition leader Alexei Navalny; and Mikhail Zygar<\/a>, who helped found the independent news station TV Rain in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Lomasko to paint a mural illustrating the consequences of telling the truth in Putin\u2019s Russia \u2013 a theme she has explored in all her works. Her completed mural, \u201cAtlases,\u201d depicted the struggle individuals face between desires to protest or to turn inward under authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lomasko first gained acclaim for \u201cOther Russias<\/a>,\u201d which was published in English in 2017. The book is a collection of what she terms \u201cgraphic reportage\u201d: comic-style art combined with current events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In it, she covered Russians who are largely invisible: activists, sex workers, truckers, older people, provincial residents, migrants and minorities. She wanted to represent them as \u201cheroes\u201d in their own lives, giving them agency and visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her heroes came into the public spotlight in 2011 and 2012, when mass protests began in Russia<\/a> after fraudulent elections<\/a> and Putin\u2019s return to the presidency. Lomasko attended the protests and sketched the participants. The rallies of 2012 seemed to signify that Russian citizens from a wide range of backgrounds could unite to resist creeping authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A protester in Moscow asks a police officer, \u2018Are the police with the people?\u2019 in an illustration from \u2018Other Russias.\u2019 Used by permission of Victoria Lomasko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to publishing her drawings, Lomasko also exhibited her work in Moscow and St. Petersburg \u2013 a seeming sign that censorship could not prevent an artist or ordinary citizen from voicing their frustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This hope did not last long. Over the next few years, the Kremlin passed a series of laws<\/a> that designated organizations, then media outlets and eventually individuals as \u201cforeign agents<\/a>\u201d if they received any funding from abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by then Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky<\/a>, who was appointed by Putin in 2012, the Russian state also began to demand \u201cpatriotic\u201d culture<\/a> supporting the government, and label anyone who resisted as \u201cunpatriotic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these years, Lomasko documented<\/a> how protests shrunk to local levels \u2013 truckers who decried a new tax, Muscovites who lamented the destruction of local parks, and urban activists who protested plans to tear down Soviet-era apartments. She still depicted participants as everyday heroes, yet she also noticed how protesters\u2019 brief sense of power through collective action faded into disillusionment after the Kremlin went ahead with its plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
An illustration from \u2018Other Russias\u2019 of a truckers protest camp in 2016 in Khimki. Used by permission of Victoria Lomasko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Changing tack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOther Russias\u201d introduced Lomasko to a worldwide audience. By the time the book came out in 2017, however, she began to question the very basis of her graphic reportage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protests that had inspired hope in 2011 and 2012 had not prevented a more aggressive, more oppressive form of Putinism<\/a> from taking hold. After the protests, the Kremlin further concentrated power<\/a> and employed propaganda<\/a> to stifle dissent, becoming what the scholars Sergei Guriev<\/a> and Daniel Triesman<\/a> have called \u201cspin dictators<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was it enough for an artist to document social change? Lomasko concluded that the answer was no \u2013 art should offer solutions. She decided to paint murals that would move beyond graphic reportage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new trajectory informed her Miami University project. By the time she arrived in March 2019, Lomasko had completed her first two murals: one for a gallery in England<\/a> and a second in Germany<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first, \u201cThe Daughter of an Agitprop Artist,\u201d featured her father, who had worked as a propaganda poster artist in her hometown of Serpukhov in the 1980s. In the mural, her father gazes at his work, the rituals of government-sponsored marches, and Lenin posters plastered everywhere. Young Vika stands with her back to her father, holding a red balloon. She stares at her future self, a woman covering the grassroots protests of 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Victoria Lomasko\u2019s mural at the Arts Centre HOME in Manchester, England. Used by permission of Victoria Lomasko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur Post-Soviet Land,\u201d her second mural, depicted the ways some former Soviet states, particularly Ukraine, were distancing themselves from their communist past after independence \u2013 while others, particularly Russia itself, seemed to be increasingly nostalgic for the Soviet era<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two paths<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lomasko spent two weeks on campus at Miami University here in Ohio, completing a mural that built on these themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The central feature are two figures representing contemporary versions of Atlas, the titan who held up the world in Greek mythology. One faces left, toward a group of people praying in front of an Orthodox icon of Jesus. Here Lomasko depicts one path Russians took in response to the oppressive nature of Putinism: turning inward, retreating to a spiritual life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second Atlas gazes upward, holding an artist\u2019s brush. Below this figure a series of people take to the streets, protesting. They hold flags and banners representing a number of causes, including the 2011 \u201cOccupy\u201d movement<\/a> in the United States. Lomasko\u2019s message seems clear: This is a second path to take to resist authoritarianism \u2013 one that might succeed if participants see themselves connected across borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Victoria Lomasko stands with her mural \u2018Atlases\u2019 at Miami University. Stephen Norris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Art in exile<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After unveiling \u201cAtlases,\u201d Lomasko mentioned that she was still trying to retain hope for her country and for humanity. Once again, it did not last long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first two terms of Putin\u2019s presidency, and that of Dmitry Medvedev<\/a>, the government had largely left citizens\u2019 speech alone, though it controlled information through state media. In 2018 and 2019, however, Russia passed laws<\/a> that clamped down on internet access and mobile communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lomasko could no longer exhibit her work in Russia and was increasingly unable to find paid work as an artist. As she told me, the state considered her unvarnished depictions of ordinary Russians to be distasteful, while publishers and gallery owners considered her works politically dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the country began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these changes allowed the government to criminalize opposition<\/a>. Lomasko made the difficult decision to flee<\/a> Moscow. She took her cat and as many artworks as she could carry, but she had to abandon most of her possessions. She documented this new journey the only way she knew: through a series of art panels<\/a> titled \u201cFive Steps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIsolation\u201d encapsulates how Lomasko and dissidents like her grew ever more cut off from the rampant patriotism espoused by Putin. \u201cEscape\u201d shows her leap into the unknown, fleeing her country because she feared arrest, while others are caught up in war and political repression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExile\u201d depicts Lomasko starting anew in a different country. \u201cShame,\u201d the most powerful, seeks to capture her emotions at having to flee, as well as the shame she felt for what Russia was doing to Ukraine. \u201cHumanity\u201d retains the artist\u2019s attempt to preserve her optimism \u2013 her sense that humans have more in common than they have differences, and that seeing oneself within a larger, global community might give power to the invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Humanity,\u2019 by Victoria Lomasko. Used by permission of Victoria Lomasko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tens of thousands of Russians have left the country<\/a> since the start of the war, many of them artists and activists. Zygar<\/a> and Volkov<\/a> \u2013 the two other Russian citizens on campus for our university\u2019s 2018-19 series \u2013 have also had to flee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lomasko\u2019s art helps trace how authoritarianism took hold in Russia across the past decade. I believe her responses to Putin\u2019s dictatorship, including her decision to flee her homeland, offer us all something to ponder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Norris<\/a>, Professor of History; Director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Norris, Miami University Victoria Lomasko, a graphic artist and muralist, has spent her career documenting how authoritarianism took hold in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. What she has illustrated \u2013 as well as the personal journey she has taken \u2013 affords a chance to see how dictatorship can develop and strengthen across a decade. In 2019, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":39002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,15534,55,8025,46,295,10,47,296,4,38],"tags":[594,2000,1741,196,885,891,886,860,6310,16159,2602,234,16160,1212,6048],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39003,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39000\/revisions\/39003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}