It didn’t take Nostradamus to foretell the overall course of a former KGB officer–cum-president of the Russian Federation. Nonetheless, when the SVA exhibition Russia Rising: Votes for Freedom opened in 2012, few, if any, of its organizers would have predicted Putin’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine or the 2022 invasion of the sovereign nation.
The inner disturbance in Russia was dangerous sufficient. As my co-curator of the exhibition, Misha Beletsky, stated on the time: “The present regime is overtly disdainful of its constituents, and whereas it typically doesn’t threaten their lives, it does assault their human dignity and their primary freedoms. Our hope is to assist lend a well-pitched voice to the outcry.”
The unique protest posters featured within the present had been created in assist of the favored Russian motion for democracy that emerged on the third-term election of Vladimir Putin. Taking part artists included R. O. Blechman, The Bukheyevs (S. Bulkin & E. Mikheyeva), Savas Cekic, Cybersect, Maxim Derevyankin, Eugeny Dobrovinsky, Lex Drewinski, Stasys Eidrigevicius, Alexander Faldin, Kevin Finn, Emily Firebaugh, Robert Grossman, Hilppa Hyrkäs, Allison Hefely, Viktor Koen, Boris Kulikov, Yossi Lemel, Alain Le Quernec, Uwe Loesch, Alexandria Lopresti, Alexey Lysogorov, Ilya Pereverzentsev, Kari Piippo, Woody Pirtle, Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding, Eugeniusz Skorwider, Lanny Sommese, Alexander Umyarov, Kevin Vander Griend and Dimon Zakharov.
A lot on the earth has modified since 2012, however the nefarious ambitions of Vladimir Putin have remained constant—constantly outrageous, harmful and deadly.
