Art as politics: street artists take on the state in St Petersburg

On 28 April, residents of St Petersburg’s Petrogradsky district awoke to a new piece of street art — one that contradicted every rule of Russia’s increasingly defensive regime.

The image depicted jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, drawn on an electricity substation with the caption "Hero of the new times." The art was on display for just a few hours before being painted over by municipal authorities.

A game of cat and mouse ensued. Atop the modesty overcoat came a counter slogan: "Navalny is Russia’s hero and Putin is a thief." Then, more paint from the authorities, and a stern message in riposte: "Choose appropriate heroes: use your head."

Across town, another official mural appeared, appropriating the original caption — "Hero(es) of our time" — only this time it depicted the Kremlin’s riot police.

That was not the last word. A few days later, guerrilla artists added a cryptic postscript to the mural — deciphered, it suggested Putin was the nation’s thief-in-chief.

It isn’t entirely clear if authorities know who is behind the guerrilla art attacks. But in opening a criminal case in respect to wall paintings for the first time, they are making a statement that they will not tolerate more of the same. Street artists meanwhile are reporting a clampdown on their work — with art being removed the moment it appears.

St Petersburg, a city of 5 million, is Russia’s cultural capital. Graffiti artists appeared here from the end of the 1990s onwards, but it is in the last five to ten years that sophisticated street art has taken a hold. Perhaps a hundred artists are now working across the city today.

Some of them are close to authorities, but the majority stay outside of the law.

Anastasia Vladychkina, a member of Yav, one of the city’s more political street art groups, says the Navalny episodes have reactivated a historical confrontation between artists and the city authorities. Artists are now facing unprecedented scrutiny, she says, as officials try to work out who might have done the paintings.

Suspicion has also fallen on her group. Given past works in support of Navalny — including most memorably, a minimalist image of a depleted battery bar with the caption "patience," which appeared before January’s protests — that is not altogether surprising.

But she tells The Independent Yav had nothing to do with the offending artwork. They always sign their work, she said — and, besides, it wasn’t even their "style”.

open image in gallery

Superficially, at least, the painting techniques do appear reminiscent of the form of another collective going by the name of HoodGraff. That is where the logic ends, given that the group is best known for their straightforward images of footballers rather than dissidents — and are, if anything, considered close to the Kremlin’s ruling party. HoodGraff have issued forceful denials via local media.

A request for comment from The Independent went unanswered.

"Maybe HoodGraff annoyed someone and this was some kind of revenge," Vladychkina suggests. "But it looks like the work of activists rather than a serious artist."

Across the Neva at EastCable, a warehouse development at the increasingly trendy south docks of Vasilyevsky Island, is 10.203, the grungy gallery home of another loose collective of street artists.

Nikita Dusto, 10.203’s coordinator, sighs and tells The Independent he doesn’t think much of the Navalny guerrilla artwork. The techniques involved aren’t difficult, he says, and the art is "unrefined:" it "punches" at the target rather than "hitting any spot”.

"Honestly, I don’t like this business because I’m into art and aesthetics," he says. "Of course we live amongst it all, we’re not blind and have our political opinions and what not, but I personally wouldn’t want to launch that into my art."

Dusto says his collective is already feeling the heat from the Navalny fallout. One was arrested after being caught with spray cans, he says, and the only thing police wanted to know is whether he knew who did the Navalny work.

"I’ll tell you now, I don’t know who did it, why they did it, or if it was ordered from above, but what I do know is that it doesn’t help artists working on the street," Dusto says. "Police have us in their crosshairs at the moment. And that’s a problem."

As authorities step up their watch, street artists are looking for new ways to stay below the radar.

One novel approach has been to depart into virtual reality. Several tech solutions, for example, now offer street artists the opportunity of saving their work online — even after the municipal authorities have come to take the art away.

The Navalny street-art  is now once again accessible to anyone with a smartphone. All they need to do is download the AR Hunter app — which Yar and Vladychkina played a part in developing — and point their phone at the  Petrogradsky district substation that hosted the work. The artwork reappears in all its 3D glory. The app features dozens of similar works.

open image in gallery

With the Kremlin’s war on dissent looking like it won’t finish anytime soon, Vladychkina says tools like this may become the samizdat of their age, a reference to the Soviet secret practice of copying and distributing books banned by the state.

"Here, for example, we’ve managed to make the substation the target," she says. "If you want to destroy the art, the augmented reality, you’ve first got to demolish the substation. That’s not, of course,  to say the politicians won’t try."