“Il nostro regime non rappresenta la nostra cultura”. Intervista sul progetto bielorusso durante la Biennale di Venezia
The article is an interview with Daniella Kaliada, curator of the Belarusian project "Official. Unofficial." presented at the Venice Biennale in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Organized by the Belarus Free Theatre, an independent underground group, the exhibition features site-specific paintings by Sergey Grinevich, a sound installation by Olga Podgayskaya, and large-scale sculptures by Vladimir Tsesler. The project includes a sphere of banned books crushed by a bulldozer, testimonies of recently released political prisoners, and sculptures made from prison bars, all addressing censorship and political trauma without direct representation of suffering.
This project matters because it asserts the existence of Belarusian culture outside state control, especially after the 2020 crackdown that forced many cultural figures into exile. By operating without institutional protection or state funding, the exhibition challenges official narratives and insists on Belarus's place in European and international cultural conversations. It highlights how art can resist authoritarianism and maintain cultural continuity even when displaced, making it a powerful statement about freedom of expression and the role of unofficial culture in repressive regimes.