25 April 2023 The Martin Roth Initiative enables persecuted artists to have protective stays tied to institutions.
"I have been asking myself ... the question of whether we are not leaving too much to the politicians ... And we even tend - I'm thinking of Russia - to acccept countries in a certain way whose internal conditions are unacceptable. These are all reasons for me to get off the sofa." These were the parting words of Martin Roth, head of prominent European cultural institutions until his death in 2017. They appeared in the conversation book Widerrede! (Talk Back!)in which Roth suggested his committed mantra for action to his three children and the public for the last time.
It is no coincidence, then, that an initiative of the Goethe Institute and the Institute for Foreign Affairs bears his name.
For a good four years now, the Martin Roth Initiative (MRI) has been offering artists and cultural workers who are at risk in their home countries because they are committed to artistic freedom, democracy and human rights, protection stays in Germany or in third countries for at least one year. New additions to those in need of protection from Afghanistan, Sudan or Libya are cultural workers from Russia or Belarus. There, the free practice of art has become almost impossible.
For example, the artist couple Antonina Slobodchikova and Mikhail Gulin from Minsk have been enjoying the hospitality of the Dresden State Art Foundation since the end of 2022.
Slobodchikova, a graphic artist and illustrator, designed the pictogram in 2020 that became the ubiquitous symbol of the opposing candidates to Lukashenko's autocratic regime: a heart combined with a fist and a victory sign.
Her partner Gulin was already charged in 2012 for an allegedly provocative performance on Independence Square in Minsk and lost his teaching position. In 2020, he actively participated in large protest actions and in the auction in favour of repressed Belarusian artists at the Moscow auction house VLADEY - unthinkable in today's situation.
Putin's war in Ukraine is also a war against critical voices in his own country. The Moscow draughtswoman and activist Victoria Lomasko was aware of the danger early on: nine days after the Russian attack, she boarded "a small, old plane to Bishkek at Sheremetyevo airport, which was probably staggering all the time because of engine trouble. I thought: If we crash now, it's still better than living in a closed country under a dictatorship". Lomasko knows exactly what she is talking about, as she has been drawing the major political trials in Moscow, including those of Pussy Riot, since at least 2010. These depressing records have been published worldwide as graphic novels. After a veritable odyssey, Lomasko is currently living in Leipzig, supported and accompanied by the Gallery for Contemporary Art, also made possible by the MRI.
Despite all the tragedy of the global circumstances, it seems almost comforting that the MRI is currently particularly present in Saxony. Not only because Roth was active here for many years, but also because the federal state repeatedly makes negative headlines because of populist and Putin-affiliated machinations. It is good that Saxon art institutions understand Martin Roth's posthumous appeal perfectly.
