Belarusian constellation.

This essay looks at three linked questions: 1) What are the consequences of a dictatorship's assault on civil society on the conditions for making art? 2) What happens when a country's art scene leaves for exile - both for those who leave, and those who are left behind? 3) How and with what consequences have contemporary artists sought to examine critically and to draw attention to the operation of oppressive power within a country subject to dictatorship? The focus is on the visual aspect of protests against the regime of Alexander Lukashenka in the spring and summer of 2020, and their ongoing repression. The fissure in Belarusian society between Lukashenka's orientation towards Russia and forms of authoritarian government, and the ideas of artists and activists tending much more towards European integration and forms of "democratic" technocracy, is clearly visible in the ways in which contemporary art is received within and work by Belarusian artists are received beyond the country. This is fundamentally a dispute on freedom of creative expression, and a headlong collision between two very different politics of national identity. This essay, based on new research and interviews, will offer serious analysis of the work of contemporary Belarusian artists. There will also be analysis of the "constellation" of Belarusian artists in exile, in Vilnius, Poland and Germany, and the forms their new diasporic creative communities have taken.