Former political prisoners and exiled Belarusian artists are constructing a haunting installation in Warsaw that captures the lived experience of surveillance, detention, and state terror under Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian regime—a powerful testimony that will anchor Belarus Free Theatre's first major visual art project at the Venice Biennale this spring.
The installation, titled Official. Unofficial. Belarus., transforms the Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista into an immersive environment of repression: golden wheat stems cut to precise 90cm lengths, a giant ball made of books banned in Belarus resting on a bulldozer's claw, surveillance cameras mounted on a towering iron crucifix, and the discordant sounds of laughter, organ music, and angle-grinders. Among the banned books are Harry Potter, works by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, and an illustrated history of kink—a stark reminder of how authoritarian states police thought and culture.
Personal Costs of Dissent
The project is masterminded by 26-year-old Daniella Kaliada, daughter of Belarus Free Theatre co-founders Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, who have been based in London since 2011 after fleeing Lukashenko's crackdown. Daniella was first interrogated by the Belarusian KGB when she was eight years old. She vividly recalls the day her mother was arrested at a protest in 2010: "Nikolai was at home and the doorbell went at 5am. I looked through the peephole and saw six men wearing masks. We sat in the house for six hours, with the doorbell continuously going, our dog barking and the phone ringing. When it stopped, the silence was deafening."
Natalia Kaliada was detained for 20 hours and threatened with rape. "You go numb, because the worst thing is not to have any control," she said. Friends were jailed for months and years, and the husband of Daniella's godmother was kidnapped and killed. "In jail, you don't understand what will happen. And in that moment, your brain freezes," Daniella said.
Composer Olga Podgaiskaya, who created a 20-minute organ piece for the installation featuring alarms, crescendos, and silences, said her husband was kidnapped on a visit to Belarus last November, detained for 15 days, and tortured. "I wanted to scream. But when somebody goes to jail, you can't be loud because they get beaten up," she said. She hopes her piece conveys that trauma and serves as "a reminder that evil lives very close by."
Institutional Failures and Double Standards
The Belarus installation is not an official pavilion but a collateral event, because pavilions require a ministry of culture's request—impossible for artists the regime has forced into exile. Meanwhile, for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has an official pavilion at the biennale. Natalia Kaliada called this "a failure of international law and institutions. It's inseparable from the world failure on Ukraine. Who is being legitimised? When the state says, 'The pavilion is coming', it means the machinery is coming, the money is coming."
Russia's pavilion is curated by Anastasia Karneeva, who runs an art consultancy with the daughter of foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Her father is an executive at Rostec, Russia's biggest defence contractor. "It is state-connected at the highest levels," Daniella said. The Kaliadas hope the pavilion will become a focus for protest, with Pussy Riot promising a takeover, and prompt a review of the biennale's constitution. "To allow any country to participate, regardless of politics, is outdated. If the Olympics can change, why not the biennale?" Daniella asked.
Art as Resistance and Memory
Painter Sergey Grinevich left Belarus to participate in the project and may never return, standing to lose his workshop, 500 artworks, and "the very beautiful house I built." He studied for 12 years in Minsk, specializing in monumental art, and once painted Soviet propaganda including portraits of Lenin. He pointed to Belarus's lineage of exiled painters: Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine, and Nadia Léger. He said today's state art is "over-sexualised and amateurish," marked by devotion to power rather than skill.
The installation includes Grinevich's large canvases showing naked figures crouching or praying and a crowd of young men in masks—similar to what Daniella saw through her peephole as a child. A painting of a wheat field will hang near a 3D version constructed from stacked stems. "It will be very ordered, very lifeless," Daniella said. Above it, they will suspend "straw spiders," a Belarusian form of dream-catcher fashioned from prison bars by artist Vladimir Tsesler.
The installation also features a communion wafer created by Rasmus Munk, recently voted the world's best chef, who has been concocting a dish at his two-Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant that will taste of detention under an authoritarian regime. Twenty versions were rejected for being too sweet or crunchy; the one Natalia and Daniella associated with a lack of hope dissolved instantly. "It's flavoured with a bud from the 'toothache plant' that leaves a numbing sensation, like Sichuan pepper," Munk said. He colored it the grey of the Belarusian army uniform. A scent has also been commissioned to smell like a freshly dug grave in the Belarus countryside in late August, laid with rotting flowers.
Nicolai Khalezin said he had once wanted to represent Belarus at Venice decades ago, but was told by the government, "Here are the artists you can pick." He said that since 1994 his homeland has been controlled by the dictator and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko, who stole the last two elections and has imprisoned thousands of opponents. Khalezin said the ball of books is "a rereading of the Sisyphus story. The ball has fallen from the mountain and crushed the arm of a bulldozer. Because when books are banned in Belarus, they are shredded and buried in the ground."
Natalia said Belarus is no longer home but a collection of memories, including her mother's pancakes and walks in the woods. Their apartment was seized after they left and friends had to delete any trace of contact with them. "I cannot spend my energy running," Natalia said, adding that she is focusing on art. More than half of the project has been funded anonymously by Belarusian businesses. She said it feels especially important at a time when borders everywhere are tightening, and added that the fear instilled by an authoritarian regime takes a long time to ebb, if ever. "That if somebody knocks on the door, it means I or Nicolai will be arrested. Daniella told me a couple of years ago, on a walk in Hyde Park, 'It's only now that I am slowly getting rid of that.'"
Official. Unofficial. Belarus. is at Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista at the Venice Biennale, 9 May – 22 November.
Why This Matters:
This installation places the human cost of authoritarianism at the center of one of the world's most prestigious cultural events, forcing audiences to confront what surveillance, detention, and exile mean for real people—children interrogated at eight, mothers threatened with rape, husbands kidnapped and tortured. The contrast between exiled Belarusian artists struggling to secure a collateral venue and Russia's state-backed official pavilion, curated by individuals connected to the foreign minister and the country's biggest defense contractor, exposes how international institutions can legitimize authoritarian regimes even as they wage war and crush dissent. The project also speaks to broader anxieties about digital surveillance and the erosion of safe spaces for dissent—concerns that extend far beyond Belarus. By documenting the lived reality of repression through banned books, prison art, and the sensory experience of detention, these artists preserve collective memory and resist the erasure authoritarian states impose on their opponents. Their work reminds us that cultural freedom and political freedom are inseparable, and that exile communities carry forward the possibility of a different future.