Krasnoyarsk artist Vasily Slonov was detained, his wife said on Instagram. A case was brought against the artist for demonstrating the symbols of the prohibited «AUE movements» (Part 1 of Article 282.4 of the Criminal Code).
The artist’s wife clarified in comments under the post that yesterday, February 8, security forces searched his house and workshop, seized all laptops, a computer and a phone.
According to NGS24.ru, 54-year-old Slonov was detained at the airport when he was “about to fly to Kazakhstan” after the initiation of the case. Tomorrow, according to his wife, a preventive measure must be chosen for him in the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk.
In October 2023, the artist was fined because of a tumbler with imitation prison tattoos, which was then displayed at his exhibition at the Novotel Hotel in Krasnoyarsk. The court decided to destroy the work itself (Part 1 of Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code). An administrative fine under the article on prohibited symbols that has entered into force allows you to initiate a criminal case against a person under a similar article.
According to the investigator’s resolution, which Mediazona has, the case was opened on the evening of February 8, and the reason was Slonov’s post on VKontakte with a photograph of the same tumbler installation. His page has been deleted and is now unavailable. The artist did not make any publications there after the October fine, his wife clarified.
Slonov considered himself to be a member of “Siberian ironic conceptualism.” “This is what we can present to the art world. How is it different from the world? Because it is ironic, self-ironic, very simple and accessible. This is what we can present to the world. The degree of schizophrenia that is inherent in Siberian artists is not inherent in anyone else,” he said in 2021.
In 2018, activists of the pro-government SERB movement destroyed his exhibition “Heavenly Jerusalem” in Moscow at Winzavod. They took the works in the form of bears in quilted jackets and painted over a portrait of Vladimir Putin with a skull and an Old Testament quote with red paint.
“Portrait of Gagarin and a Soviet satellite with a "skeletal" symbolism, a pitchfork with teeth curved into the word love, a sculpture of an angel made of wood chips trumpeting the Last Judgment, axes, metal kokoshnik saws and quilted jackets. Personifying, according to the author, an attempt to storm the “Heavenly Jerusalem” — apparently undertaken by the Russian soul, which, as we know, cannot be understood with the mind,” Artguide described the exhibition at the time.
In the summer of 2013, Slonov’s exhibition “Welcome! Sochi 2014″ with satirical posters: on them the giant Olympic symbols Cheburashka and the Polar Bear were chasing athletes, and the Olympic rings were made of barbed wire and in the form of five gallows. As a result, gallery owner Marat Guelman, who was responsible for the development of the White Nights festival, within which the exhibition was held, was fired from his post as director of the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art.
Updated at 10:36. Added details about the initiation of the case.