Maria Stadnik has interviewed her peer Aliaksandr Biruk, a Belarusian contemporary artist who has recently won the Gaude Polonia scholarship and moved to Poland. They have discussed the issues artists experience in emigration and how Aliaksandr has chosen to deal with internal suffering, engrained in him by Soviet upbringing.

М: Over the recent years, you have moved from Saint Petersburg to Tbilisi, and then to Warsaw? How was this experience for you?

A: I moved to Georgia in the middle of April 2022. But unfortunately in Georgia the opportunities for me to grow as an artist were limited: they didn’t have many exhibitions or competitions, traveling was also difficult since without a Georgian residence permit I could not get a visa. That’s why I've moved to Warsaw on a Gaude Polonia scholarship program.

The only thing is, it's a sour place for artists to practice. I didn't see any prospects of earning a living through art. First of all, the income level isn't that high. Second, Georgians generally aren't inclined to buy even local artists, much less anyone from Russia or Belarus. And the expatriates from Russia and Belarus don't acquire works of art because they don't have their own homes there and lead a nomadic lifestyle.

In all post-Soviet countries, buying art isn't part of the culture yet. I've noticed this countless times. Even among the people who have money. Even if you don't mind buying a painting, the thought of buying it simply doesn't occur to you.

When I went to the openings of my exhibitions in the Netherlands, I learned that it’s a normal practice to buy paintings for everyone who has a home. Ever since the culture of Dutch painting has flourished, any industrialist wanted a beautiful painting, a still life, etc., for their home. And since then, it's been a completely normal thing for them to own a painting. Basically, if you're a painter it makes more sense to be at a place where there's that kind of context, rather than trying to first popularize the idea of acquiring art and only then selling it. That's double the work.

M: What project did you submit in your application for the Gaude Polonia scholarship program in Poland?

A: This program aims to integrate Poland and neighboring countries, and they expect projects that show the connection between Poland and Belarus. I took the famous Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. He is one of the brightest representatives of the avant-garde, and the country is proud of him. I suggested making a spatial project with painting and installation that is tied to reflections on music, looking into its meanings and history. He worked with the theme of World War II and the post-war period in Poland. I highlighted that his music remains relevant to this day in light of the ongoing geopolitical events.

M: Did you like the art in Poland? Are you inspired by anything in particular?

A: Poland has a rich and diverse cultural life, and it's great that art here isn't surfacy, but rather raises complex contemporary issues.

We have the Warsaw Gallery Art Week. There are a lot of modern galleries here and many museums and galleries supported by the government. A huge museum of modern art has been recently built. Sometimes, for large exhibitions from private collections they provide castles and hotels.

Interesting fact: if an artist exhibits in a local gallery, they are being paid, because it’s like a law and common sense. There are many spaces and programs for artists here. They support their local art environment. You can really feel that atmosphere here, it's a completely different life.

M: I saw on your social media that you went to a contemporary art market in Berlin. Tell us about the experience.

M: Do you feel that moving to Europe and changing the context is affecting your art?

A: There was a moment when I was desperately trying to integrate and I felt this immigrant feeling of being a “zero”, like being absent and invisible.

M: What are your plans for the future?

A: To continue painting, working, and searching for opportunities, to establish my own voice. Because when you're constantly moving, this life of an immigrant artist really throws you around. If you make yourself dependent on this “artist profession”, then your life depends on whether you and your art are liked by others and whether there is recognition or not. And the possibility of your existence is actually depending on the need to "be liked." And that's what’s difficult when moving from context to context.

In one place you like one thing, in the other you like something different, and that strikes an internal conflict of your existence. It comes under threat if you are already invisible here, disliked, or you’re doing something wrong, and therefore some internal disturbance of self-perception begins. Now I would like to reaffirm what I authentically want to do, without regard to the context, trying to please, achieve recognition and be accepted by the art world. So now it's a path of returning to myself, to the confidence in my artistic vision.

M: Since </odra> has been exploring how the ghost of the Soviet past affects us today: in culture, in art, in society. And what alternative strategies for development and growth exist. Do you feel this ghost in yourself? How does it manifest itself? How to move forward and overcome it, or will it be with us for a long time?

A: The ghost of Sovietness is felt mainly in three areas. The first is education. I suffered greatly from the Soviet education system, I went through and studied it from all sides. And probably I would formulate the ghost of Sovietness for myself like this - “another economy”. There was no connection to do more and faster and to get more. Everything was normalized, it seems to me there was a feeling of a calm, unhurried life. And it seems that they just loved this way of life: to sit, to dwell in some endless feeling of art and this is just such a "ghost of Sovietness" in which I felt myself. When you study in this education system, then you understand that everything you were taught there could have been learned in three years. When I started teaching, my students reached the level of the 4-5th year of the academy from scratch in several classes, not in years. Yes, these people do not have the skill of hourly drawings of a nude, but the understanding of the image comes quickly.

When I got into the real world and left the academy as if from the Soviet Union, I needed to concentrate on issues such as the sales of art, how much it can be in demand or where and by whom it can be in demand. The question of sales arises when the Soviet Union leaves your head. In general, I’ve studied a profession that basically does not exist, I studied monumental painting. There is no vacancy for a monumental artist in our world, but it was in the Soviet Union and it died with it.

And the third ghost of Sovietness, as I feel it: I fall asleep and I have a temperature and I begin to argue with a certain collective image of a Soviet person, the older generation, I begin to try to prove some of my young righteousness. My feeling is that the ghost of this Sovietness should simply fade away with the death of these people, the carriers of myths.

Everything Soviet now is a new memory that never existed before. And this is frightening in the sense that the ghost may never fade away with the witnesses. You can come up with a new memory, new memories, and people begin to remember what they did not remember twenty years ago. Therefore, it is not clear what will happen in twenty years.

I perceived the ghost of Sovietness as a part of Russian Orthodox culture, as a national idea – to suffer. In the Soviet Union, people loved to suffer, and there was the idea that art had to be suffered through (like Chistyakov had it). The idea that true art can be achieved only through suffering is strongly tied to theSoviet self-perception.