Following the women-led uprising of 2020, Belarusian artists have responded to the ongoing challenges of the past year and a half by creating a significant body of protest embroidery and textile art, drawing inspiration from both recent trends in Western contemporary art and the nation's rich folk heritage. These practices of collective embroidery provided women with safe avenues to express their political views while facing suppression of protests, complete suppression, and social recomposition due to mass emigration from the country. Now the sociopolitical crisis that began during the revolution in Belarus in 2020 is further aggravated by the occupation by Russian troops using the territory of Belarus as a platform for military aggression against Ukraine.

"The Code of Presence: Belarusian Protest Embroideries and Textile Patterns" is the first major exhibition to bring together twelve textile projects from Belarus, bridging movements such as craftivism and cyberfeminism alongside traditional textile arts. The title polemically alludes to the key work of Belarusian philosopher Valentin Akudovich entitled “The Code of Absence: Basics of the Belarusian Mentality” (2007), a fundamental text explaining the difficulties in articulating Belarusian ethnic identity. In contrast to the concept of "I do not exist", widespread among mostly male Belarusian intellectuals, this exhibition charts lines of presence through what are often described as "traditional women's practices" or "craft" textile arts, often excluded from institutional artistic hierarchies. Moreover, our curatorial goal is to break the traditional discursive link between textiles and the study of ethnic nationalism in the region, focusing on women's voices and labor and expanding the discussion to include the spectrum of civic identities in Belarus. In this context, the code is not only what is commonly called the textile code of Belarusian cultural heritage, but also the careful process of coding the diverse civil society in Belarus, as well as the multiple relationships between textiles and their representation in digital media.

The exhibition is organized in three sections: craftivist strategies of Belarusian protest embroidery, collective embroidery practices and traditional textile patterns in mixed media. Her goals include articulating messages of protest, documenting the events of the revolution, collectively processing news and emotions, embracing traditional folk culture in the face of social upheaval, and reflecting on the realities of life under authoritarian regimes. The latter category covers a variety of social and gender experiences, including those of women. The curatorial selection spans the experiences of Millennials and Generation Z across geographic boundaries and reflects recent migrations of vulnerable cultural workers and artists from Belarus. For the first time, this group of artists is presented in a digital exhibition dedicated exclusively to textile art.

https://apps.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/code-presence