Minsk Artist Takes Viagra And His Clothes Off To Protest Against Censorship

Dur­ing his eccen­tric per­for­mance, the artist took Via­gra and put a “Min­istry of Cul­ture” sign on his pri­vate parts to protest against cen­sor­ship.

But what did make the artist come to his own exhi­bi­tion in a birth­day suit in the first place?

Talk­ing to jour­nal­ists, Kuzmich explained that he was inspired by “No erect penis­es” response to his ques­tion about cen­sor­ship at the exhi­bi­tion spon­sored by the Min­istry of Cul­ture.

“The pur­pose of the ‘Shield, or the Min­istry of Fal­lo­cul­ture’ cam­paign was to show that in the mod­ern cap­i­tal­ist art world, the artist is not a thun­der­er who offers the audi­ence an alter­na­tive uni­verse and has the right to be free and inde­pen­dent.

Most often he is a mis­er­able crea­ture who works on inte­ri­or design and cel­e­bra­tions for a pen­ny. Those who are bet­ter off live on grants. There­fore, a penis masked by a shield is a metaphor for the artist’s inac­tion and pas­siv­i­ty in the mod­ern art world,” he said.

How did it all start? The Nation­al Cen­ter for Con­tem­po­rary Arts of Belarus invit­ed Kuzmich along with three oth­er artists to take part in an exhi­bi­tion.

“My first thought was to refuse. Those famil­iar with the Belaru­sian art con­text know that this is a total­i­tar­i­an and cen­sored ide­o­log­i­cal place, where there is no place for artis­tic expres­sion.

But I agreed to the exhi­bi­tion to find out what hap­pens when the artist comes to the state art insti­tu­tion and begins to coop­er­ate with it,” explained Kuzmich.

After three months of numer­ous align­ments and edits for­bid­ding foul lan­guage, thorny reli­gious, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal issues the artist decid­ed to fight against cen­sor­ship his own way.

As expect­ed, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the cen­tre didn’t appre­ci­ate the stunt and treat as a per­son­al affront to the Nation­al Cen­ter for Con­tem­po­rary Arts, the Min­istry of Cul­ture and the state.

“This act is not only against cen­sor­ship, but it is also against cul­ture as a whole. This is my opin­ion as an artist. To my great regret, it has now become very pop­u­lar to attract atten­tion this way. More­over, I am offend­ed by his actions as a cit­i­zen.

If he undressed and protest­ed, for instance, in a trol­ley­bus, this would be inter­pret­ed as hooli­gan­ism, and here it is an artis­tic expres­sion. In my under­stand­ing, he should be respon­si­ble for his actions as a hooli­gan,” said the direc­tor of the cen­tre Sergey Krish­tapovich.