Birds with the people

Птушкі з народам / birds with the people, 2022-2023

The series consists of large-format double-sided painted carpets, which draw on the recent history of the protest movement in Belarus: The anti-government protests of the 2020s and Russia’s strong intervening in Belarus since the start of the war in Ukraine. The title of the work “Birds with the people” quotes a phrase posted on social media by one of the oldest environmental protection organisations in Belarus, “Ахова птушак Бацькаўшчыны”, as a call for solidarity with the peaceful protesters in Belarus in 2020. The organisation was subsequently deemed extremist and closed down by the government, like most NGOs in Belarus in recent years.
The work also refers to local art history: the history of the “dyvan” (painted rug made of self-woven fabric), a painting technique that was widespread in rural areas in the region of Belarus, Poland and Ukraine, and to UNOVIS – the Vitebsk avant-garde school of the 1920s. Both have existed side by side, one of them has become part of the established art history, and the other marganalized to local craft, mostly associated with female anonymous domestic work.

read the Lexicon_Birds-with-the-people, by Antonina Stebur

Exhibition view: Birds with the people, PSM, Berlin, 2023

Exhibition view: The Other. Re-Imagine the Future, Kunsthaus Graz, 2023

Exhibition view: Artistic Ecologies Every Day. Galerija nova,  Zegreb, 2022

the voices of birds silenced / Змоўклі птушак галасы, 2023
From the cycle birds with the people / Птушкі з народам
Acrylic on canvas, 152cm x 110cm

all the games, all the fairy tales / Гулі ўсе, казкі ўсе, 2023
From the cycle birds with the people / Птушкі з народам
Acrylic on canvas, 157cm x 128cm

FR4978, 2023
From the cycle birds with the people / Птушкі з народам
Acrylic on canvas, 152cm x 110cm

round dance / Дзе ж буду дзе ж я карагод вадзіць, 2022
Acrylic on canvas, 105cm x 153cm