Antonina Slobodchikova, From the series Heroes Are Just Heroes, 2023

marker, pencil, cardboard, 70 х 50 cm

Based on the surrounding political and social situation, I have been working for some time on the subject of "heroes" at all its historical levels of meaning and contemporary categories of application. The image of the hero has undergone decisive changes many times, and was omnipresent in Soviet and Stalinist iconography, which is still present in urban space today. Today the term is still used and abused for propaganda purposes by the state and those in power.

The graphic "Fear devours the soul" is one of the works in the series "Heroes are simply heroes," and the phrase I use there is a quote from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 film "Angst essen Seele auf."
In my opinion, this phrase perfectly expresses and defines the current state of each of us, people who are in total helplessness in the face of power.

BIOGRAM:
Antonina Slobodchikova (1979) - artist, performer. She lives and works in Minsk. She graduated from the Minsk Art College named after I. Glebov and the Belarusian Academy of Arts. She works with various media, from collage to total installations. Her work explores themes of motherhood, identity, gender, power, and memory.


Individual exhibitions:
2023 Kassandra Complex. Japanese Palaces, Drezden
2020 "Reformatting Space" (Bern, Switzerland).
2019 "Dirt is best seen in white" cultural center OK 16 (Minsk, Belarus)
2012 "YANO HERE" Ў Gallery (Minsk, Belarus)
2008 "HE BEST" Gallery "Underground" (Minsk, Belarus)
2008 "K - R - R" Gallery "ZOYA" (Warsaw, Poland)
2005 "1 + 1 = 1" Museum of Contemporary Art (Minsk, Belarus)

Group exhibitions:
2021 festival "OPEN CITY /.
OPEN CITY" (Lublin, Poland)
2021 "When form becomes attitude" Krynki Gallery (Krynki, Poland)
2021 "Screams of the Silented" Grey Space in the Middle (The Hague, Netherlands)
2021 "CULTPROTEST.ME - Künstler: innen für Demokratie in Belarus", Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany)
2021 "Zeitgenössische Protestkultur: Beispiel Belarus.
Belarus.Protest.Kultur "Gallery nEUROPA (Dresden, Germany)
2021 "Everyday" Mystetskiy Arsenal (Kiev, Ukraine)
2020 DiDi Gallery "Green Corridor" (St. Petersburg, Russia)
2020 KH space "Forbidden Zones" (Brest, Belarus)
2019 Armenia Art Fair 2019 (Yerevan, Armenia)
2019 "Status: Vysnovy. How would you be with the Sennya masters?" space KH (Brest, Belarus)
2019 Fourth international open-air forum "Musk literature" (Kaptaruny, Belarus)
2019 "Sculptural Compositions. Dialogue with Nature" (Klaipeda, Lithuania)
2019 SAM TARGI 2019 (St. Petersburg, Russia)
2018 Gallery "ZBOR in progress" Ў (Minsk, Belarus).
2018 Third International Literary Forum (Kaptaruny, Belarus)
2018 Space KH "Mater Materia" (Brest, Belarus)
2017 "White-Red-White" Contemporary Belarusian Art CCA (Torun, Poland)
2017 "Bukhori Dictionary" CECARTlink Art Perspective (Bukhara, Uzbekistan)
2017 Contemporary Art Space "Diffusion Space" (Batumi, Georgia)
2017 "Diffusion Space" National Historical Museum (Tbilisi, Georgia) 2017 Art Project "Names" Cultural Center "Corpus" (Minsk, Belarus)
2016 "Unfashionable" NCCA (Minsk, Belarus)
2016 Museum of Contemporary Art "Purity" MWW (Wroclaw, Poland)
2016 "Obrzedy powszedny i obswietnу" Gallery "Arsenal" (Bialystok, Poland) 2016 "Everything was different" NCCA (Minsk, Belarus)
2016 "ZBOR. Hand of Belarusian Art" Izolyatsiya Foundation (Kyiv, Ukraine)
2015 "Salamyany vyray" Arthauz pARTisan (Kaptaruny, Belarus)
2015 "Autumn Salon" Palace of Arts (Minsk, Belarus)
2015 "Diffusion space" NCCA (Kaliningrad, Russia)
2015 Exhibition "ZBOR. Construction of the archive" Arsenal Gallery (Bialystok, Poland)
2015 "Moustache INTO tverdae, dissolve near pavetra" M. Bogdanovich Museum (Minsk, Belarus)
2015 Gallery "Erotic household design" of the Belarusian Association of Designers (Minsk, Belarus)
2014 "Feminist Art Criticism," TSEKH (Minsk, Belarus)
2014 "Alphabet" exhibition and educational project, State Institution "Art Gallery G.Kh. Vaschenko" (Gomel, Belarus)
2014 "Offside" exhibition and discussion project, GaleriaЎ
(Minsk, Belarus)
2013 "Gender Route" art project "VIS LEGIBUS EST INIMICA. Violence is the enemy of the law" TSEKH (Minsk, Belarus)
2013 "XVII International Art Fair ART Moscow" (Moscow, Russia).
2013 Gallery "Artist. Collector in Belarus" Ў (Minsk, Belarus).
2012- Museum of Contemporary Art "EXIT II" (Minsk, Belarus)
2012-Contemporary Art Center project "Going Publik" (Klaipeda, Lithuania)
2012 "Palace COMPLEX" Gomel palace and park complex (Gomel, Belarus)
2012 "EXIT" Historical Museum-Reserve of Zaslavl (Zaslavl, Belarus)
2011 "Cento. Defragmentation" Republican Art Gallery "Palace of Art" (Minsk, Belarus)
2011 Gallery "Jana can't tell the sky" Ў (Minsk, Belarus)
2011 "Jana can't tell the sky" ART VILNIUS'11 International Contemporary Art Fair NEC "Litexpo" (Vilnius, Lithuania)
2010 Gallery "Vis-à-vis. Proper aerographs" Ў (Minsk, Belarus)
2010 "LitAra. Visual past paezii" Goethe Institute (Minsk, Belarus)
2010 Gallery "Gender Route" Ў (Minsk, Belarus).
2010 "Republican Youth Exhibition" Republican Art Gallery "Palace of Art" (Minsk, Belarus).
2010 "Workshop of 7 Artists" City Art Gallery of works by L. Schemelev (Minsk, Belarus)
2010 "On the way to a modern museum" Project "Dissection of a female corpse" (Minsk, Belarus).
2009 Art project "SketchBook" Gallery Ў (Minsk, Belarus).
2009 "Philosophy of the Masses..." Belarusian neo-pop "Art Gallery Ў (Minsk, Belarus)
2009 "Red Corner" ART VILNIUS'09 International Contemporary Art Fair NEC "Litexpo" (Vilnius, Lithuania)
2009 Belarus Pavilion of the 53rd Venice Biennale of the National Exhibition Center "BelExpo" (Minsk, Belarus)
2009 Affordable Art Fair Spring Collection 2009 Battersea Park, London (London, United Kingdom)
2002 "LOVE LABIRINT" Gallery "Zhilbel" (Minsk, Belarus).