«Official. Unofficial. Belarus». Фота: сацсеткі.
The Belarusian project “Official. Unofficial. Belarus” has opened at the 61st Venice Biennale as part of the parallel program.
The exhibition by the Belarus Free Theatre is housed in the historic Church of San Giovanni Evangelista and brings together works by Uladzimir Tsesler, Volha Padhaiskaya, Siarhei Hrynevich, Mikalai Khalezin, and Rasmus Munk.
The church is a complex space, and the project by curator Daniela Kaliada incorporates religious motifs while creating an “architecture of surveillance and control,” with the recurring and intrusive element of a CCTV camera. Another reference to the religious setting, though long desacralized, is the organ on which composer Volha Padhaiskaya performs her work — a 20-minute soundscape in which powerful crescendos give way to resonating silence.
The idea behind “Official. Unofficial. Belarus” is to immerse the viewer in an atmosphere of unfreedom perceptible through all the senses. In this way, the project is immersive, aiming almost literally to “capture” the viewer completely. It includes music, the smell of a grave in a Belarusian village, and a dish created by Danish chef Rasmus Munk that conveys through taste the experience of arrest and the fear of isolation. There is also the element of touch: visitors can touch a wheat field. A painting of a wheat field by Siarhei Hrynevich hangs next to a 3D version assembled from folded stalks. In this field, the ears of grain are not “under the sickle,” but beneath ritual “spiders” by Uladzimir Tsesler, made not of straw but of prison bars.
Siarhei Hrynevich also presents several more paintings united by the themes of submission, oppression, and control. Today, the theme is not only Belarusian — it resonates with many viewers from different countries.
At the center of the exhibition is a 2.5-meter sphere created based on an idea by Mikalai Khalezin: it is assembled from books currently banned in Belarus and in various countries around the world.
The Venice Biennale is a biennial international exhibition with a format that has evolved over more than 120 years and remains highly complex. Political passions often run high at the event because national pavilions are overseen by the culture ministries of participating countries, whose art becomes a kind of showcase or message, often explicitly political. Belarus has not participated in the Biennale since the events of 2020, when the Belarusian selection process for the National Pavilion was announced and then suddenly canceled by the Belarusian Culture Ministry.
“Official. Unofficial. Belarus” — an unofficial national pavilion — is not a state representation. The project won a highly respected Biennale competition, and Belarus is now represented by independent Belarusian culture.
“Independent Belarusian culture, not the regime, possesses cultural authority. We, the collective of Belarusian artists, are all now in exile and come from a country of world-class artists, thinkers, and cultural innovators, and we are proud to show our homeland to the world through their lens rather than through the way it is defined by the state,” Belarus Free Theatre co-founder Natallia Kaliada said in one of her interviews.
The Biennale opens to the general public on May 9 and will run until November 22.