Belarusian Artist Volia Sasnouskaya Presents Performance Dedicated to 2020 Protests in Wrocław – Photo Report

Reform.news Editorial Team · 6 November 2026, 16:53

https://reform.news/en/belarusian-artist-volia-sasnouskaya-presents-performance-dedicated-to-2020-protests-in-wroclaw-photo-report/

A performance by Belarusian artist, researcher and curator Volia Sasnouskaya (Olia Sosnovskaya) took place in Wrocław as part of the International Performance Festival “Nowe Spojrzenia” (Międzynarodowy Festiwal Performansu „Nowe Spojrzenia”). She presented a performative work titled “Citing Sources”.

The performance was based on the artist’s reflections on materials from the National Library of Belarus, where she explored the concept of the “socialist holiday” through books, texts and images. This archival layer is juxtaposed with her personal experience of the protests in Minsk, particularly her memories of evenings in residential districts such as Anharskaya, where the sounds of road blockades and car horns merged with a sense of an unfinished movement.

As the accompanying description explains, the work explores the relationship between language and movement, event and document, affect and politics. In Volia Sasnouskaya’s work, text serves not merely as a carrier of information but as a stage, a prop, a witness and an instruction – a score through which human bodies can train their political imagination.

Through collective reading and bodily tracking of the geometry of lines, the artist effectively draws the audience into the revolutionary process. The performance rejects the idea of revolution as a one-off explosion in the streets and instead proposes viewing it as an ongoing affective connection that remains unfinished and relevant to this day.

The artist reflects on understanding oneself as a political subject in motion – in a march, in space and in the imagination. “I realise that political movement, in the most literal sense, ‘needs to be learned, practised… acquired as a skill and tested. Again and again, with each new repetition, bringing it back to life anew’.”

Volia Sasnouskaya was born in Minsk and lives and works in Vienna. Her works have been presented at venues including Kunsthalle Wien, e-flux, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and documenta fifteen, as well as at biennales in Kyiv, Prague and Kosovo.

The International Performance Festival “Nowe Spojrzenia” (New Perspectives) is a major event taking place in Wrocław from November 2 to 7, 2026. It brings together around 50 artists and researchers from various countries. The festival focuses on exploring new forms of expression and examining contemporary realities through the body and visual art at leading venues across the city, including the Jerzy Grotowski Institute’s Laboratory Theatre.