“Festival of Disobedience” by Marina Naprushkina: Belarusian Artist Takes Part in European Manifesta Biennial

Every two years, the travelling Manifesta biennial, launched in Rotterdam in 1996, moves to a new European city or region. From June 20 until early October, the biennial is being held in Germany’s Ruhr region, focusing on the fate of an industrial area heavily affected by World War II and post-war reconstruction. One of the key themes explored through the artworks is the closure of thousands of churches across Germany.

Curator Josep Bohigas uses abandoned churches as cultural and community venues, reimagining these spaces in the context of a changing reality. Twelve post-war church buildings that had fallen out of use have been transformed into public spaces.

Selected curator tandems developed projects in different cities. In Bochum, where the curatorial team consists of Polish specialists Anda Rottenberg and Krzysztof Kościuczuk, Marina Naprushkina, a Belarusian artist based in Berlin, is among the participants.

Her project is hosted in Gethsemane Church, built between 1947 and 1950. Through the work, the artist reflects on the role of migrant workers who helped sustain industry in the region surrounding the Ruhr.

Using a bell as an advertising symbol of Bochumer Verein, one of the region’s leading industrial manufacturers, Naprushkina created a collage of symbols drawn from the city’s history and landmarks.

In front of the church, the artist presents an interactive sculpture that reproduces the shape of a historic bell that originally belonged to a pre-war church destroyed during the war. This heavy symbolic object has been transformed into a soft structure — an inflatable bouncy castle bearing the slogan “We Will Never Go Back!”

Reform.news spoke about the project with researcher Antonina Stsebur, who visited Manifesta 16.

“Marina Naprushkina’s participation in Manifesta 16 is particularly significant both for the artist herself, for Belarusian culture, and for the biennial as a whole,” Antonina Stsebur said.

“The theme of Manifesta 16 — This Is Not a Church — is dedicated to communities in a post-migrant society. It is no coincidence that the Ruhr region was chosen as the venue. This is a territory marked by the ruins of the industrial era, a mining history, several waves of migration, infrastructure crises, and the consequences of failed migration policies.

It is here that a particularly pressing question arises: how can people with different life experiences, cultural traditions, religions, and traumas coexist today? How can a community be built amid diversity and inequality?

It seems to me that Marina Naprushkina is currently one of the most important artists not only in the Belarusian context but also internationally. For many years she has worked consistently and sincerely with migrant communities, creating artistic and social spaces for dialogue and solidarity. Her participation in Manifesta therefore feels entirely natural.

What particularly impresses me is how Naprushkina addresses complex political themes through bodily experience. One part of the installation, Kein Läut (“No Bell”), is an interactive inflatable trampoline in the shape of a bell. Its form echoes the church bell inside the building where the work is displayed. Visitors can jump on it and shout: ‘We Will Never Go Back!’

What happens at that moment? At first glance, it appears to be a mischievous gesture associated with children’s games and the joy of movement. At the same time, however, it literally suspends the body in the air. This feeling of suspension is familiar to many migrants and refugees, including thousands of Belarusians. It is the state of not knowing whether your residence permit will be extended, whether you will be allowed to stay in the country, or how the next round of bureaucratic procedures will end. It is the experience of people who are regularly humiliated by being told they should ‘go back home,’ even when returning home has become impossible or dangerous.

Today, as anti-migrant sentiment and xenophobia are once again intensifying across Europe, Naprushkina’s work takes on particular relevance. The trampoline becomes simultaneously a bodily experience, a critique of anti-migrant policies, and a form of protest. It is a festival of disobedience — an opportunity to loudly assert one’s existence and one’s right to occupy space.

Art has the ability to connect different parts of society, expand the boundaries of political imagination, and create territories of freedom even when it seems there is no room left for them. That is why Marina Naprushkina’s work at Manifesta 16 is one of the key contributions not only to the Belarusian art scene but also to the broader conversation about migration, solidarity, and the right to be together in the contemporary world.”

The 16th edition of the European Nomadic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Manifesta, is taking place in Germany’s Ruhr region from June 21 to October 3.

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