{"id":1910258,"date":"2026-04-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1910258"},"modified":"2026-04-29T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:00:00","slug":"belarus-free-theatres-venice-exhibition-shows-what-repression-feels-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1910258","title":{"rendered":"Belarus Free Theatre’s Venice Exhibition Shows What Repression Feels Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Natalia-Kaliada-and-Daniella-Kaliada-pictured-with-a-work-in-progress-by-Sergey-Grinevich-for-Official.-Unofficial.-Belarus.-Photo-Tina-Zaborowska.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhile much attention\u2014and controversy\u2014has been generated in recent months over the return of Russia to the Venice Biennale, another outcast nation will also have its first presence at the global art exhibition in six years, albeit in an unofficial capacity: Belarus.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the first time, the Belarus Free Theatre, an underground theater group, will stage an official collateral exhibition at the 61st Venice Biennale. The show, titled \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.,\u201d is set to explore how art is \u201cmade, censored, and experienced under authoritarian power and constant surveillance,\u201d according to an official description. It\u2019s a provocative and timely subject, made more so by the fact that the Belarus Free Theatre has been in exile since 2020, following widespread protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994 in what has been described as a brutal and repressive dictatorship.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeedless to say, \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.\u201d is neither sponsored nor condoned by the Belarusian government, a fact that makes this subversive exhibition a direct challenge to the state-led narratives of not only the Russian pavilion, but those of other nations who have become increasingly authoritarian in recent years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is, I believe, only the fifth time Belarus has been present at the Biennale, and for the first time not as a state, but as a self-governing, self-authored cultural body,\u201d Daniella Kaliada, the company\u2019s curator of art projects, told ARTnews<\/em> in a recent interview. \u201cThis isn\u2019t something inserted into Venice. It\u2019s something that has been missing, the voice of unofficial culture representing what usually only a nation-state represents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStaged in the more than 1,000-year-old La Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, the exhibition will feature site-specific paintings, a sound installation, and large-scale sculptures that show what repression feels like.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t want visitors simply to learn about a situation,\u201d cofounder Natalia Kaliada told ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cWe wanted them to pass through it: the architecture, feeling, sound, scent, sculpture, obstruction, surveillance, ritual, and bodily experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

ARTnews<\/em> sat down with Natalia Kaliada and Daniella Kaliada to discuss the upcoming exhibition, the difference between official and unofficial representation at the Biennale, and how the context of the Theatre\u2019s work has changed, as more countries\u2019 governments turn authoritarian and repressive.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision<\/em>.<\/p>\n

ARTnews<\/em><\/strong>: Why is the Biennale the right place to stage this exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daniella Kaliada<\/strong>: The Biennale is so obviously the \u201cOlympics\u201d of the art world. The visibility you get there is probably second to none. That visibility is a form of power. For a culture like Belarusian culture, which has existed on a periphery, as this parallel unofficial culture, that visibility stops being a passive moment and becomes a statement. This is, I believe, only the fifth time Belarus has been present at the Biennale, and for the first time not as a state, but as a self-governing, self-authored cultural body. There is no other context in which we would want to launch this movement of Belarusian unofficial culture. This isn\u2019t something inserted into Venice. It\u2019s something that has been missing, the voice of unofficial culture representing what usually only a nation-state represents.<\/p>\n

Natalia Kaliada<\/strong>: Venice feels like one of the few places where questions of nationhood, visibility, power, and cultural legitimacy are staged so publicly\u2014and that creates exactly the right context for \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.,\u201d because the exhibition is precisely about what happens when culture is forced outside official structures and still continues to exist, speak, and create. This is not simply about bringing Belarus to Venice. It\u2019s about reclaiming narrative space inside one of the world\u2019s most visible art platforms. The Biennale allows us to place independent Belarusian culture not at the margin, but in direct conversation with the international art world.<\/p>\n

Does \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.\u201d represent a larger critique of the Biennale\u2019s structure, and the way that so much of what you see in Venice reifies the nation-state?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DK<\/strong>: The fact that we were selected as a collateral event\u2014out of some 400 applications for very few places\u2014shows that there is a demand for this distinction to be made visible: the distinction between representation and authorship. Most of the pavilions are state pavilions that represent governments, and what governments want to represent varies enormously across nations. We position ourselves entirely outside of that. The Biennale is allowing us to make that distinction visible, allowing unofficial narratives to re-enter a space that has long been reserved only for what official governments want to say. Even though there is always controversy around who is showing what, the fact that we are there representing artists who have been jailed and exiled\u2014in our country, there are artists who have been killed for their art\u2014is a significant step. And maybe it\u2019s even outside the Biennale\u2019s own comfort zone.<\/p>\n

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A work in progress by Sergey Grinevich for \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.\u201d<\/span>Photo Tina Zaborowska<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

How has exile changed the Belarus Free Theatre\u2019s relationship to the work it does?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NK<\/strong>: Exile removes the illusion. It also clarifies what must be protected\u2026 Repression is never purely visual. It is spatial, sonic, and atmospheric. It affects how you move, how you listen, how you think, how you breathe, how you anticipate danger, how you experience silence. That\u2019s exactly what we plan to convey, because the multi-sensory form is essential. We didn\u2019t want visitors simply to learn about a situation. We wanted them to pass through it: the architecture, feeling, sound, scent, sculpture, obstruction, surveillance, ritual, and bodily experience. They all work together to create a system, not an illustration. The point is not immersion for its own sake. The point is to allow the body to understand something that language alone often cannot fully carry. And that is precisely why we moved from theater language into contemporary art.<\/p>\n

DK:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s about the fact that we\u2019re not trying to represent a country the way a national pavilion would. We\u2019re not representing a state. We\u2019re inducing a state of body and soul. One of the big influences on the exhibition was Michel Foucault\u2019s Discipline and Punish<\/em> [1975], in which he writes that punishment should strike not just the body but also the soul. That is why we have so many multidisciplinary and multisensory elements. Even though we are creating a system with the exhibition, the most effective systems are those you stop noticing. But equally, nothing is harder to represent than absence, which is why we\u2019re trying to make it physical.<\/p>\n

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\"Portrait<\/div>\n<\/div>
Belarusian artist Vladimir Tsesler, who has made new\u00a0sculptural works made from prison bars for the exhibition.<\/span>KANAPLEIDIKI<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It strikes me that Belarusians have been experiencing this kind of oppression for a long time, but it seems like it\u2019s becoming more universal, if not quite at the same intensity, in the US and elsewhere. Does that change the context of the exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DK:<\/strong> We\u2019ve talked about it a lot among ourselves, because while our exhibition is called \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.,\u201d Belarus isn\u2019t really an outlier\u2014as it\u2019s often framed. Growing up, every newspaper called Belarus the \u201clast dictatorship of Europe.\u201d But for this exhibition, Belarus is a prototype, not an exception. We\u2019re proposing to entirely rethink it as an early model of a condition that is now global. Natalia, in her earliest interviews, from the foundation of the company, has been saying that dictatorship is contagious. And I think now it has proven the extent to which we\u2019re all diseased.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat has changed is not the representation, which has become identical everywhere, but that certain mechanisms have become recognizable across contexts. The idea that visibility equals safety no longer holds. Even when I think of surveillance: I left Belarus when I was quite young, so for me it has a duplicitous meaning. London is the most surveilled city in the world\u2014every square meter has multiple cameras pointing at it. You know you\u2019re being watched all the time, which might give you a sense of security. And yet we have some of the highest knife-crime rates, and perpetrators are rarely found. So I think audiences are now able to recognize this, across cultures. It changes how the work is read, but not what it is. Belarus is an entrance point into questioning: Is our surveillance the same? Are we all being watched\u2014but being watched differently?<\/p>\n

NK<\/strong>: The experience feels more legible to more people now. Not because all situations are the same, but because many people are beginning to recognize patterns that once seemed distant: surveillance normalized as convenience, truth lines blurred and destabilized, fear internalized, language manipulated, public life shaped by invisible systems of control. That does change the work, and it doesn\u2019t make Belarus less specific\u2014it continues to function as an entrance point. But at the same time, it makes the exhibition more widely readable. What once seemed like a story from the periphery can now be understood as a warning from the edge of a condition that is spreading. That\u2019s one of the central stakes of \u201cOfficial. Unofficial. Belarus.\u201d It\u2019s not asking audiences to look at Belarus from a safe distance. It\u2019s asking them to recognize something uncomfortably close to home.<\/p>\n

Belarus hasn\u2019t participated in the Biennale since 2019, which was the same year Russia last participated. Now Russia is returning. Did it feel urgent to establish a presence before Belarus attempts to return officially?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DK:<\/strong> It\u2019s very interesting that this has coincided, because we of course had very different internal deadlines from the Biennale process. I think they may have had quite a difficult time managing it, because on one hand they had us\u2014an exhibition that goes entirely against the state narrative and demonstrates that independent voices, no matter how many times you try to squash them, will reorganize and exist somewhere else and eventually represent what a nation truly is. On the other hand, the fact that Russia is showing, and that Belarus will most likely show again one day, demonstrates that state pavilions represent governments. It shows there is a need for a different outlet for different views, and that a cultural position that exists completely independently, outside the state, should be heard at the same level.<\/p>\n

NK:<\/strong> It\u2019s exactly the question: who gets to represent the country, and under what conditions? And that question is not abstract for Belarusian artists\u2014it is lived reality, when voices are silenced. Our main purpose is to make those voices loud. This is why we say it\u2019s not about Belarus Free Theatre, it\u2019s not about the state, it\u2019s not about any territory. It\u2019s about independently and officially declaring, once again, that the unofficial, independent culture of Belarus exists, and that it\u2019s time to bring it back into the European family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/belarus-free-theatre-venice-exhibition-interview-1234782107\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Natalia-Kaliada-and-Daniella-Kaliada-pictured-with-a-work-in-progress-by-Sergey-Grinevich-for-Official.-Unofficial.-Belarus.-Photo-Tina-Zaborowska.jpg?w=1024″] While much attention\u2014and controversy\u2014has been generated in recent months over the return of Russia to the Venice Biennale, another outcast nation will also have its first presence at the global art exhibition in six years, albeit in an unofficial capacity: Belarus. For the first time, the Belarus Free Theatre, an underground theater […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1910258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1910258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1910258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1910258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1910258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}