«Your portrait, your honour» exhibition

Court sketches and artworks

Beginning in autumn 2019, Russia's «Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media» or Roskomnadzor for short, issued to International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Centre a dozen of reports for violation of Russia's «foreign agent» law.

This law, that has its beginning timed to Vladimir's Putin full return to the office in 2012, in its current form allows the state to designate private individuals, journalists, journalistic organisations, and non-commercial organisations as «foreign agents», placing those designated at a major disadvantage. The state designated Memorial Human Rights Centre as «foreign agent» in 2014, which was followed by International Memorial being designated such in 2016. The «foreign agents» are required, among other things, to label each and every form of content they create with a lengthy phrase stating their «foreign agent» status. 

The violations found by Roskomnadzor lead to court hearings, which then lead to appeals at higher courts. Despite the vague regulations on how «foreign agent» label should be applied, we nevertheless complied with court decisions, fixed the «violations», and paid six million rubles in fines. However, in 2021, the Prosecutor General's Offices of Moscow as well as Russia, again brought both International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Centre to court. This time it was for, quote, «systematic violations of foreign agent law», with them demanding both organisations to be «liquidated» for such. Once again Memorial ended up in court for those exact, so called, «violations» found by Roskomnadzor in 2019. The new hearings have begun.

Each hearing was attended by the judge, by a representative of Roskomnadzor, and/or by a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office, by the lawyers and by other representatives of «Memorial», but quite unusually, the hearings were also attended by artists. Everyone by now knows the views of the judges, of the Prosecutor General's Office, of Roskomnadzor, and even of Memorial. On this exhibition we are attempting to show you the views of the artists.

The exhibition features works by the following artists:

Masha Berezina (Маша Березина)
Kura Brodskaya (Кура Бродская)
Maksim (Максим)
Maria Volohonskaya (Мария Волохонская)
Petya Gindilis (Петя Гиндилис)
Katya Gushchina (Катя Гущина)
Stas Zhitskiy (Стас Жицкий)
Sonya Kasyan (Соня Касьян)
Tanya Kormer (Таня Кормер)
Nusya Krasovitskaya (Нюся Красовицкая)
Darya Krotova (Дарья Кротова)
Lilya Matveeva (Лиля Матвеева)
Stas Metelsky (Стас Метельский)
Nikita Morgunov (Никита Моргунов)
Katya Osipova (Катя Осипова)
Natalya Petrova (Наталия Петрова)
Anna Sarukhanova (Анна Саруханова)
Andrei Sergunkin (Андрей Сергунькин)
Inga Khristich (Инга Христич)
Pavel Shevelev (Павел Шевелев)
Leonid Shmelkov (Леонид Шмельков)
Mikhail (Vokabre) Shcherbakov (Михаил (Vokabre) Щербаков)
Varya Yakovleva (Варя Яковлева)

The exhibition is brought to you by:

Masha Berezina (Маша Березина), exhibit design
Nyusya Krasovitskaya (Нюся Красовицкая)
Olga Lebedeva (Ольга Лебедева)
Lilya Matveeva (Лиля Матвеева)
Alexandra Polivanova (Александра Поливанова)
Evelina Rudenko (Эвелина Руденко)

and also

Anna Bulgakova (Анна Булгакова)
Irina Galkova (Ирина Галкова)
Valentin Grinchuk (Валентин Гринчук)
Natalia Stefanovich (Наталия Стефанович)
Darya Fadeeva (Дарья Фадеева)

«Your portrait, your honour» exhibition is open since December 15, 2021, and due to continue until February 14, 2022.
The exhibition is free to visit daily, except for Sundays and Mondays, from 11.00 to 19.00, at Memorial Headquarters in Moscow (5/10 Karetny ryad, entrance from the corner of the building).

As part of the exhibition we are planning guided tours and meet-ups with artists (in Russian and English). Follow International Memorial social media for further updates.