Young Russian artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva were due to represent Russia in April at the Venice Biennale, the art world jamboree that can turn little-known artists into stars.
Now that potentially bright future seems to be gone.
On Sunday, the couple withdrew from the event and posted a brief statement on Instagram and Facebook. “Art has no place when civilians die under missile fire, when citizens of Ukraine hide in shelters, when Russian protesters are silenced,” the statement said.
Raimundas Malasauskas, the curator of the Russian pavilion where Savchenkov and Sukhareva are said to have presented their work, withdrew from them. The pavilion will now “remain closed” throughout the Biennale, according to a statement the organizers posted on Instagram.
Many Russian artists are against the war, but few have such high-profile protest platforms as Savchenkov and Sukhareva. Thousands of street protesters have been arrested in Russia since the military invaded Ukraine on Thursday, and speaking out could hurt career prospects and even lead to arrest or jail time.
Yet thousands of artists and cultural administrators have signed their names to online petitions to express industry-wide opposition to the war. One, calling for an immediate end to the conflict, had more than 17,000 signatures on Monday.
That petition describes the conflict as “a terrible tragedy” that threatens cultural life in Russia, as international partnerships may be halted and institutions forced to close if sanctions bite and Russia’s economy falters. “In such circumstances it will be almost impossible to participate in culture and art,” the petition says.
Their resistance has been noticed in the Kremlin. On Sunday, Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior lawmaker, directly targeted anti-war cultural figures, calling their actions a “betrayal.” “If you’re so principled, start refusing state subsidies,” he added in a statement to Telegram, the social media app popular in Russia.
Two contemporary art museums in Moscow withdrew their programming in response to the outbreak of the war, although neither of them directly criticized the government.
On Saturday, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art announced that it would stop “work on all future exhibitions” “until the human and political tragedy unfolding in Ukraine is stopped”. Upcoming shows include exhibitions by German art world star Anne Imhof and Britain’s Turner Prize winner Helen Marten. The Garage did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
The garage was opened in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova, a prominent art collector, with the support of her then-husband, oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is widely regarded as an ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
GES-2, a museum in Moscow that opened last year, made a similar statement on Sunday, saying it “cannot close its eyes to the tragic events we have all witnessed” and that it would close all exhibits. and suspend events.
The museum is funded by Leonid Mikhelson, director of Novatek, Russia’s largest private gas group, which has close ties to the Kremlin. In December, Mr. Mikhelson gave Mr. Putin a private tour of the new museum. A GES-2 spokesperson declined to comment.
Mr Kjartansson said in a telephone interview that he made the decision to retract the piece as soon as he woke up Thursday to learn about the invasion. He wouldn’t consider reopening the show until “Putin was overthrown and we had a bright, beautiful Russia,” he added.
Since the beginning of the war, Mr. Kjartansson had spoken to dozens of people in the Russian art world and they were all shocked by what was happening in Ukraine, he said, but few felt they could say anything in public. Even signing an online petition was “very, very brave,” Mr Kjartansson added.
Russian artists cannot be as open in their criticism of the war as Mr. Kjartansson. On Monday, one of the artists behind a popular petition against the war said in a telephone interview that she could not reveal her name for fear of retaliation. Some of the petition signatories had already lost their jobs, she added.
“From my point of view, we have no future, so we have nothing to lose to speak out against this,” she said, “but at the same time, we are all afraid.”
