Pussy Riot become icons: "blasphemous" art exhibition under investigation
Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Russian Investigative Committee
has launched an investigation into the
art exhibition that opened in September in Moscow and
is dedicated to Pussy Riot.
The suspicion is that the exhibited
works, in which the three girls
from the feminist punk band are depicted as icons, could incite religious
hatred.
Entitled "Spiritual Combat", the exhibition aims to evoke the story of the feminist
group and its battle against religious
institutions and state corruption. The three girls were sentenced to two years in prison in August for having staged an
anti-Putin prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
The disputed works by the artist Evgenia Maltseva are on show at the Ghelman gallery in the centre for contemporary
art Winzavod, immediately targeted
by some groups of Orthodox
fanatics who tried to prevent the opening of the exhibition, September 20, leading to unrest and scuffles. The
initiative had already been strongly
criticized by the Moscow Patriarchate.
The head of the Department for Relations between Church and society,
Vsevolod Chaplin, warned that the show
could insult sacred
images, venerated by Christians and in a statement the Russian Orthodox Church
had spoken of "a cynical attack
on Russian culture" that
has nothing to do with art.
According to the organizers, however, they
are works of modern art with
which you want to "liberate
the icon from his chains historical dogmatism, obscurantism and ignorance".
20/11/2018 11:38