SERGEY SHABOHIN. Practices of Subordination

The Practice of Subordination, an individual project by Sergey Shabohin (born in 1984), is methodical and scrupulous in examining the mechanisms of power. The artist documents true stories and daily occurrences, having collected banal objects found in Minsk’s public and private space. The material has then been used to tell an insightful story of overwhelming pressure exerted upon citizens by state structures of contemporary Belarus. The project, in progress since 2010, has become a proprietary collection of diverse pathologies of an authoritarian system in one country, as well as a comprehensive archive of that system’s practices. In a simile of a scientific archive, the collection has been developed and organised by origin of all objects collected, and by key words sourced in a variety of areas of knowledge. References to mythological characters and to literary and artistic works of world culture have become an option as well.

Putting the archive on display, Shabohin continually reflects on a specific spatial situation. The artist takes over Galeria Arsenał’s unused elektrownia space with its area formerly occupied by technical staff, and makes it part of the logic of his archive project. It comprises eighteen separate parts accompanied by a map, a diagram, and a dictionary. Shabohin blends the individual (the social body) with the oppressive nature of an overwhelming ideology, sending the viewer on a journey across the meanders of human life – unstable, non-cohesive, and heavily dependent on the external framework of the state system’s grace – or its lawlessness.

Lena Prents

translated from Polish by Aleksandra Sobczak

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Sergey Shabohin (shabohin.com) – an artist, curator, art activist, co-founder and art director of KALEKTAR Belarusian contemporary art research platform (kalektar.org), founder and editor-in-chief of the Belarusian contemporary art webstie artaktivist.org, author of analytical essays on Belarusian contemporary art.

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Related events:

September 3, 2016 – a guided tour of the exhibition with an exhibition curator and artists

The event will be adapted to the needs of hearing impaired or deaf people.

Interpreted by: Justyna Nowosadko

Admission is free.

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