The last photograph was taken in Minsk in January 2021. White sheets of paper placed in windows became the symbol of protests against the regime. Even the lack of any symbol makes Lukashenko’s hatchet-men tremble, being a sign of divergence and a means of expressing one’s views. It was formally impossible to legally charge them with a crime. An empty sheet of paper does not express anything. However, even these were banned in 2021, and people’s flats were raided if there were white sheets of paper in their windows. The inhabitants were beaten-up, arrested and fined huge amounts of money. A sheet of paper on glass, an invisible protest. During the active stage of anti-government protests in 2020, I worked to document them, photographing all the opposition marches. In November 2020, I was arrested at a Sunday march in which a female protester named Roma Bondarenka was killed. I was arrested for taking pictures, and the Militisya (Police) tried to drag me into a police car. I was defended by some women and managed to escape, but for a long time I was not able to overcome my fear and continue realizing my idea. In January, I produced three photographs showing a white sheet of paper. I hung the first of them from my window, the second – was a photograph taken in front of the entrance door to our building, and the third was taken at the Post Office in my neighbourhood (this is the one featured at this show). My actions might have been considered organising a protest in a public institution, but I was trying in this way to continue documenting the Belarusian protests. I also made a filter-mask on Instagram and registered a chat-bot on Telegram. With a friend of mine Katia Pomazana, who is a human rights campaigner in Ukraine, we began collecting stories of people suffering the effects of the regime’s psychological violence. We conducted five extensive interviews and collected comments and photographs made using the filtermask on Instagram and Telegram. The Belarusian protest had been transferred to the Internet. The regime has taken our streets from us, gagged our media, and even our houses have ceased to be our safe havens. People are in a state of fear but they continue to protest. Small lightboxes feature the portraits of anonymous people from Belarus who are threatened with prison just because a photograph like this exists. Lukashenko’s regime knows how the global media function. No photograph – no protest. However, nothing has ended; Belarus has been continuing its protest on a daily basis, even if this is not visible.
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eng Translation Pending Review
Invisible Trauma
2020 –
2021
Lightbox with a photograph