Practices of Subordination — Sergey Shabohin

Practices of
Subordination cycle:

ID: C4

Date:

Since 2011 (end of 2010)

Introduction:

A total research archive of objects of fear found in Belarus from 2010 till 2018. This traveling mobile collection-museum consists of more than a thousand found and created objects, documents, images, slogans, video and audio files. All exhibits in the archive are fundamentally mundane ordinary objects that are evidence against the state (exemplified by the Belarusian regime), and demonstrate the deleterious effects on its citizens (exemplified by Belarusian society) throughout life, beginning long before birth and ending with the regulation of a person's memory after his or her death. The cycle intertwines political science and art history, urban studies and sociology, mythology and biology. This cycle sequentially "dissects the body" of the Leviathan State into 18 carefully crafted artistic parts. Each part explores the mechanisms of emergence, rise, triumph, functioning and decline of the state ideology and practices of subordination.

Graphic panel
Practices of Subordination.
Map,
2015

Sergey Shabohin’s personal project, Practices of Subordination methodically and meticulously analyses mechanisms of power. Since 2010, the artist has collected and documented stories about everyday events in Belarus, a testimony of deliberate, forceful interference of the state in the life of its citizens. Within his social circle and in the public space of Minsk capital city, Shabohin finds trivial, mundane objects and images which are a reminder of what happened or a reference to the ideological regime. The artist himself sees them as evidence of the ever-invigilating and punitory order. He organizes the collected materials – text documents, images, photos, objects – as an archive. From that, he builds a poignant narrative on state structures oppressive pressure on citizens in modern Belarus.

Lena Prents: Sergey Shabohin: Archive-Museum-Laboratory

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