What does it mean to live in a country that prohibits narratives of who you are? And how can such a life be represented? While Annica Karlsson Rixon and Anna Viola Hallberg are part of an aesthetic tendency distinctly influenced by research, they are acutely aware of the specific conditions of the exhibition medium. State of Mind – Queer Lives in Russia at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg exhibits the documentary project of the same title, which both artists have worked on since 2006. A sizable cube with large-scale portraits installed on its exterior walls dominates the space. Inside the construction monitors show interviews with lesbian or queer women in Saint Petersburg, who answer questions about their life situation, the conditions for LGBTQ-people in the city, and in Russia in general.
In the exhibition, spectators are met by a minimal aesthetic. The portraits on the outside of the cube possess a stringency that is both harmonious and a little solemn. They represent some of the people interviewed in the films, photographed outdoors in Saint Petersburg. Most of them are group portraits: four youths standing on a roof; a group of women resting by a canal; three young girls with similar haircuts sitting in a park, one of them holding the hand of another. One image shows three women on a bridge across a river. The background could be that of a tourist’s snapshot, but its rendition is highly elegant.
In this case, the broader project implied by large-scale photography means that LGBTQ-people forcibly claim public places, while the images deepen the perspective on what it means to “take up space”. The portraits establish a sophisticated interplay between the landscape and the figures: the people are part of the cityscape, and the cityscape is theirs. The space of the picture belongs to these figures, who form the center of beautiful places that bathe in an even, soft light. In this utopian aspect of the work, the city’s beauty and melancholy momentarily replace the reality of a place where one should conceal one’s identity, or be subject to threats and violence.
In order to take part of the interviews, the visitor must enter the black box whose physical space is given a symbolic function that ties into the imagery used to describe relations: coming out, inner life, near and dear. The interior is darkened and seven monitors are installed on iron bars. Each shows one speaking person filmed in close-up. Each episode begins by showing the first name of the person interviewed. In all, there are 3 hours of film including 39 people, but the visitor is now more or less forced to choose who to listen to. The wall behind the monitors is covered by a projection, a view of the Neva River in Saint Petersburg, and a dreamy whistling sound is heard in the background. From a distance, the faces on the monitors appear to float above the river.
Many interviewees tell of an existence where their sexual orientation is something they don’t talk about in order to avoid conflict. A younger woman says that she cannot tell her family about her sexual orientation, but that they in fact already know. Another woman’s parents are worried that other people in the small town will find out that their daughter is lesbian. Several tell about a similar situation at work, where they can’t talk about it although many are already aware. One person is afraid that her employer will find out that she is lesbian, while another amiably describes how people are gossiping about her at work. She smilingly adds that after her husband died, she could do as she pleased: she arranges poetry readings in her apartment, and contends that meeting places are important for those who feel too old to go to a club. Another interviewee relates the difficulties involved in running a magazine for LGBTQ-questions, and how she was threatened while working at a telephone support line for homosexuals (the incident ended with her trying to offer therapy to the man calling).
Toward the end of each episode, the interviewee relates a vision of the future. This is especially interesting, since we are living in the future they speak about; the films are recorded in 2007, a year after the murder of Anna Politkovskaja. The speakers express themselves pessimistically, and think that the situation will remain unchanged or worsen. How very right they were is evident in the 2013 law banning what is called “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” directed at minors. In the Russian parliament, the last phase of enacting a new law is a so-called third reading, in which the law is reviewed together with all its amendments. This explains the otherwise enigmatic title of Karlsson Rixon’s photographic series, At the Time of the Third Reading (2013), a selection of which is displayed in the exhibition. The images are photographed during the very time when the law was passed in the Russian Duma, but on an island where a group of women have a recurrent camp. By showing a place of refuge, a place of exception, Karlsson Rixon creates a negative representation of the evolving social climate.
The work functions as an appendix and points to how the work that bears the exhibition’s title changes in different contexts. Since 2007, State of Mind has been exhibited at several places in Eastern Europe such as Minsk, Kharkiv and Saint Petersburg. The history of the exhibition, which has become an important part of the work itself, is available through a print-out, but it would have been interesting for visitors to know more about the reception and the effects.
In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus the work implies an intervention into a society hostile toward LGBTQ-people. The imperative of silence is met with a softly spoken “we exist”, and a non-provocatively articulated narrative about silencing and shaming. In the interviews, people tell about their life at home, at work and in the city. In this way each society is exposed through its reactions. However, the work primarily addresses the group that it portrays, and the artists’ expressed intention is to spread and support activism. In conjunction with the exhibitions, meetings were organized where local activists, artists, gallerists and academics gathered to create networks and carry on the discussion.
In Gothenburg, State of Mind functions rather as documentation and a field study of foreign places. The exhibition at the Museum of World Culture is part of Karlsson Rixon’s thesis, Queer Community through Photographic Acts at Valand Academy of Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg. Viewers risk being taken over by distance, thereby losing the possibility to relate what is said to the Swedish situation. The implications of a work that to such a high degree plays with the public and the intimate are determined by its presentation in different political contexts, but also in relation to the individual spectator. As a Russian speaker, I experience that I come closer to the persons in the films than I would have done only reading the English subtitles. A word such as “lesbijanka” resonates differently with me.
Visitors move into the heart of enlightened public space, yet enter its more intimate sphere, and engage with narratives that address what must otherwise be kept secret. The questions that the women are asked are rather impersonal, although the answers are intimate; they speak of love affairs, of what is most exciting and important, but also of shame. For many, the humiliation is devastating, though some appear to separate the views of those around them from their own, and retain their own image in spite of their surroundings. No matter how they handle it, their lives will be affected by a society that prohibits the existence of their innermost desires – the foundation of one’s person – by outlawing their identities.
