13 October 2022 The works of the artist who fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine will be on display at Santa Giulia from 11 November.
Her works arrived in Europe from Russia stuffed into the suitcases of the French consulate staff. 'Otherwise,' she says, 'I would have lost 10 years of my work'. It was thanks to the interest of Belgium (through a film crew that was making a film about her) that Victoria Lomasko managed to escape from a country she no longer wanted to live in. And thanks to the efforts of those unknown 'monuments men', it will be possible to visit the exhibition 'Victoria Lomasko. The last Soviet artist", which will open on 11 November at the Santa Giulia Museum. Yesterday was the preview in the context of the Peace Festival, with a public meeting at Palazzo Loggia: together with Lomasko, in an ideal passing of the baton, also the Chinese artist Badiucao. Symbol of the continuity between the two exhibitions is the work "Covid portrait for Dr Li", donated by the Chinese artist to the Brescia Musei Foundation as a sign of gratitude "for a city that has not only represented an opportunity to get out of the social media and make me known to a wide public, but also a refuge against the interference of the Chinese government, which tried to intimidate even this city - he recalls - to have my exhibition cancelled".
Attempt unsuccessful. And after 'China (is) not near', Badiucao returns to Brescia (from Australia, where he lives) with an emblematic canvas: a silent scream above a mask, a tribute to that 'Dr Li' who first denounced the presence of the coronavirus in China and then fell victim to it. Two artists, Badiucao and Lomasko, "coming from different backgrounds but united by the desire to give a voice to those who cannot have it," points out the president of the City Council Roberto Cammarata, "because they live in places where freedom is compromised. Badiucao himself repeatedly refers to the figure of the artist as a 'megaphone for those who cannot speak'. Before the Chinese dissident, it was the art of Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan that made the outsiders of Erdogan's regime speak out. Now it is the turn of Victoria Lomasko, who recounts a Russia of 'despair and horror', where flight is mass and where those who remain 'do so because they think that country can change. I decided to leave as soon as the news of the attack on Ukraine broke: at that moment I knew I would do anything to escape. In Russia,' says Lomasko, 'there is a huge generation gap, young people do not want war and they suffer from the West's closure. Putin's regime has no future, it will not last long'. Lomasko, Badiucao, Dogan: three voices, three acts of the same research - signed for Brescia Musei by Elettra Stamboulis - that aims to recount human rights (or their absence) through art.
