E31: Antisemitism in the arts: a Russian-Israeli experience

In 2022, a Russian art duo, who call themselves Pomidor, left their homes in Russia to take up residency in the UK because they could no longer work in Russia. Maria and Polina began working together in 2018, after they met as art students in Moscow, both dedicated to creating socially engaged art. In 2021, they founded Pomidor Residence to support like-minded artists. However, a dramatic change in legislation significantly restricting freedom of speech in Russia, and because their art criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it became clear they could not stay in that country. While Polina has stayed here in London, Maria, a Jew, decided to make Aliyah and move to Israel, although she still works in London.Their move to London offered new scope for their art which they were excited about. In the summer of 2023, they were approached by an east London gallery, Metamorphika, and were booked for an exhibition, in July 2024. But immediately after the exhibition launch party, the gallery curator called them into a meeting the next morning, literally hours before the show was due to open to the public. There had been complaints that Maria had expressed on social media her grief for Israel after the Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023. He told Maria she would have to repudiate her country or take down the exhibition. Maria and Polina had come to the UK, where freedom of expression is supposedly a core value, only to find their freedom cruelly curtailed. In this episode I interview them about their story.A strong theme within Pomidor’s work is the common reluctance to speak out, and the readiness to silence speech. In Russia, open and honest discussion about the war in Ukraine is suppressed. Taking inspiration from a book, ‘An Elephant in the Room’ by American sociologist, Eviatar Zerubavel (Oxford University Press, U.S.A, 2007) which examines the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial — their work tries to highlight the problem of keeping of ‘open secrets’, of forbidding public discussion and the use of certain words, such as ‘war’, ‘peace’ and ‘attack’, in referring to Ukraine. So their exhibition featured flags embroidered with phrases such as…‘What would you do in my place?’‘Silence like a cancer grows’‘I will close my eyes and you will all disappear’and the mysterious rhyme…‘Yesterday upon the stair I saw a man that wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today Oh how I wish …. [he’d go away]’. These flags made up an installation, hanging down from the ceiling, with phrases and statements stitched into the fabric, gently whispered as you brush past them. They ask you to question the consequences of silence and denial, and of silencing dissent, of not speaking about difficult realities. It is deeply ironic that the exhibition, which was not even about Israel but rather responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was cancelled as a result of Maria’s denunciation of Hamas’s monstrous attack on her new home, Israel. Despite apparently wanting initially to exhibit Pomidor’s flags challenging Russia’s attempt to silence dissent, the gallery decided to dissociate from her as an Israeli, implying that her support for Israel made her work a legitimate target of similar silencing. Manick Govinda’s review of the exhibition, which eventually happened at the Not for Sale Gallery in Hackney, explains it well. The story as reported in The Times of Israel and by Index on Censorship. Pomidor was invited to exhibit at the Women Create exhibition at the end of May and Claudia Clare references their experience in Episode 28 of this podcast. The experience of antisemitism in the arts is becoming shockingly prevalent, as this YouTube video by the Campaign Against Antisemitism shows. More about Pomidor Get full access to Arts First at artsfirst.substack.com/subscribe

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.