Victoria Lomasko
The Last Soviet Artist
From 11 November 2022 to 08 January 2023
The Municipality of Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei and Festival della pace (Peace Festival) present for the first time in Italy the solo show of the Russian dissident artist Victoria Lomasko, curated by Elettra Stamboulis.
The Exhibition
Promoted by:
The Municipality of Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei, Alleanza Cultura
Under the patronage of:
Parlamento Europeo, Amnesty International, Associazione Genesi, Memorial Italia, Cooperativa Cattolico-democratica di Cultura, Akademie Schloss Solitud
In collaboration with:
Festival della Pace, Associazione culturale Mirada
Curated by Elettra Stamboulis
The exhibition, presented as part of Brescia’s Festival della Pace is the third instalment of the research programme undertaken by Fondazione Brescia Musei under the curatorship of Elettra Stamboulis: a project which initiated in 2019 with the Zehra Doğan’s show We will also have better days. Works from Turkish Prisons, and continued in 2021 with Badiucao’s La Cina non è vicina. Opere di un artista dissidente (China is not near. Works by a dissident artist).
Victoria Lomasko’s exhibition sets out to present a comprehensive overview of the Russian artist’s production with a site-specific display. In fact, Lomasko spent a period in residence in Brescia in order to create site-specific works dedicated to what she has been experiencing and observing in recent months. Lomasko’s artistic research offers a detailed reconstruction of Russia’s social and political history from 2011 to the present day: from the anti-Putin demonstrations that the artist drew from life with her original and recognisable style, to the representations of “deep Russia”, the country of the destitute and marginalised, a subject that has always been among her favourites.
The artworks
Victoria Lomasko, Showdrop generation (dettaglio 2)
Victoria Lomasko, Showdrop generation (dettaglio)
Victoria Lomasko, Underwater Activist
Victoria Lomasko, Garden of Generation
Victoria Lomasko, Behind the Forest
Victoria Lomasko, A Generational Battle #3
The opening of the exhibition
The Artist
Lomasko was born in Serpukhov, 99 km south of Moscow, in 1978. Her father, a metalworker in this small town entirely dedicated to industrial production, secretly acted as an agitprop artist.
graduated in Graphic Arts from the Moscow State University in 2000, Lomasko soon embarked on an uneasy path of research pairing observation and action, documentary drawing and performance, activism and personal commitment, translating into the artist’s body being physically part of a group.
Since March 2022 has been living in Europe
Regarded by English-speaking critics and press as the most important Russian social graphic artist, Lomasko is essentially still unknown to the Italian public, although her books have long since been translated into English, German, French, and Spanish. The Other Russia won the Pushkin House Book Prize in 2018, despite never being published in Russia. A documentary, The Last Soviet Artist, directed by musician and composer Geraint Rhys, was made about her and she has been interviewed by the international media several times. Her works have been presented at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, which has acquired part of her archive, in Basel, and London, and she is currently a guest at Documenta in Kassel.
Making of Victoria Lomasko. The Last Soviet Artist
