Mikhail Gulin

Mikhail Gulin is a prize-winning painter and sculptor from Belarus, currently working in exile in Germany. He is a member of the Belarusian Union of Artists, having served from 2005 to 2011. A graduate of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts and the Gomel Art School, Gulin’s artistic practice has been showcased nationally and internationally in countries such as Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.

Gulin’s work focuses on the exploration of identity and the history of art, often engaging with significant political issues. He selects materials and techniques for his compositions based on the conceptual framework of each piece, primarily creating painterly works using acrylics on canvas. As a conceptual artist, Gulin also curates exhibition projects and participates in actionist art.

Notably, he has exhibited at prestigious events, including the Venice Biennale in 2005 and the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2015.

ARC Interview with Misha Gulin

How do you feel as an artist in exile?

For people from other countries, from other cultures, it’s very hard to imagine what kind of artist I represent. I come from an authoritarian country where, essentially, contemporary art did not exist as a distinct field. And now I’ve arrived in a space that is highly competitive and immensely rich in terms of art. Understanding who I am here, where my place is, whether I even exist here at all—this is incredibly difficult.

If I talk about my subjective experience, about how I feel—I am now much further away from the main pathways of art than I was when I lived in a closed, authoritarian Belarus.

In Belarus, contemporary art never had any real status of its own, it never existed as a fully formed, independent phenomenon. We had no gallerists, no open collectors. Contemporary art had a semi-marginal status, it looked and functioned more like a subculture.

That’s why you could work in various fields—NGOs, education—while still maintaining the possibility of combining it with your artistic practice, of being an artist.

Here, the profession of an artist carries a much greater sense of independence.

How do you feel in exile, beyond just the professional aspect?

I didn’t leave because I wanted to, not because I chose this departure, this country, this city. We left because both my wife, artist Antonina Slobodchikova, and I were actively involved in the 2020 protests, we condemned the war in Ukraine—it wasn’t safe for us to stay. I can’t say that I was prepared for this move. We took integration courses, but it seems like the first step toward integration is realizing that you have actually moved to a new country and that you need to integrate. And I still haven’t resolved that for myself—have I really left Belarus? Have I moved to Germany? I don’t have an answer to that, and it holds me back, keeps me from moving forward, from finding peace.

I think the key word to describe our situation is isolation. We’ve ended up isolated for so many reasons. First, because we landed in Dresden. Most of the Belarusian diaspora is in Düsseldorf or Berlin, and in a way, we’ve fallen out of our community.

My wife says—we need people who know us. The largest Belarusian diaspora right now is in Warsaw, and maybe it would make sense to move there. But I’m not sure it would change anything. The people who know us are in the same state as we are—no one has the energy to offer support right now.

And moving is not easy either. On the one hand, we’re not tied to this place at all, but on the other, we’re bound to it so tightly. My wife, Tonya, has an expired passport, and Belarusians can no longer get new passports abroad. She received a foreigner’s travel document. With this kind of paperwork, even moving to Berlin is difficult, let alone another country. So the little that we do have—a rented apartment, our registration, our social worker, Frau Müller—these things tether us tighter than any leash.

Sometimes my wife brings up the idea of going back. But for me, that’s not an option. I don’t even let myself think about it. I just keep running forward—I can’t afford therapy, so I just forbid myself from dwelling on it or feeling nostalgic.

And then there’s another kind of isolation. We haven’t seen our child in a year. We all left together, our daughter spent a year with us in Germany, and then she went back to Belarus. She was 17 when she left, and by the time we see each other again, she’ll be 19. Two years of my only daughter’s life.

To what extent do you feel this isolation in a political sense, within the European context?

The Belarusian agenda of 2020—the one that shook the world, made it turn its head toward Belarus, made people learn about it, believe in it—has faded.

I feel deeply upset for so many people who have been overlooked, people of great significance who never received the recognition they deserved simply because the Belarusian protests were in the global spotlight for such a short time.

But people in Europe and America are tired. They’re even tired of helping Ukraine—that’s the most terrifying part. So how can we expect them to remember Belarus?

And you have to take this fatigue—this exhaustion from other people’s suffering—into account. Here, you’re just another immigrant, no different from anyone else. There’s no point in talking about 2020 or about being forced to flee—it doesn’t impress anyone anymore. We’re just another wave of exiles. You can’t go around explaining to every person that you didn’t come here to study or work, that your circumstances are different.

And on one hand, there’s this perspective: “Your revolution failed—those peaceful marches of yours were useless, and it was obvious from the start that you would be crushed.”

On the other hand, people here struggle to grasp the reality that in Belarus, a single comment on Facebook can get you labeled as an extremist, that riot police can come to your home—nine massive thugs in uniform breaking down your door. All this madness, this nightmare that is so familiar to us—it neither shocks nor convinces anyone.

Or take another example. While our daughter was in Belarus, I feared for her safety. I canceled an action I had planned. Maybe that sounds strange or exaggerated, but when the president of your country openly says, addressing those who fled, that “we will find your relatives anywhere,” it’s terrifying. You don’t want to test whether he’s joking.

It’s unthinkable—a president openly promising repression against the relatives of innocent people. It defies reason. And foreigners find it nearly impossible to comprehend. The hardest part is translating our reality into another language, explaining the context we lived in. And that’s yet another layer of our isolation.

At the same time, I’ve noticed that this exhaustion—it’s universal. It extends to me, too.

I’ve stopped constantly monitoring Belarusian local news. I no longer live by that news cycle. I used to follow it obsessively, keeping track of pro-regime activists, blogs, Telegram channels. I would anxiously check whether my name appeared in that information bubble, trying to gauge who knew what about my role in the 2020 protests. But I’ve stopped.

So many people are being tortured in Belarusian prisons. For months, even years, there’s no news about them—what condition they’re in, what kind of treatment they’re enduring, whether they’re even alive. We worry about them deeply, knowing that repression is only escalating, that there will be even more political prisoners.

But when you spend years powerless to change anything, that sense of helplessness consumes you. And so I’ve stopped reading the news every day. Maybe I’m trying to conserve my strength.

Now, the only thing I follow is the war. That is the center of my world’s news cycle. It’s something that brings immense pain, but also something that carries all my hopes.

It’s pain for the Ukrainians, but for Belarusians too.

Because it’s obvious—while the war continues, there will be no thaw. Not in Russia. Not in Belarus.

What is happening with you now as an artist? Are you able to work and exhibit?

We moved to Germany as fellows of the Martin Roth Initiative program. Through this program, my wife, the artist Tonya Slobodchikova, and I (together we work as the art group 1+1=1) had a major exhibition in Dresden at the Japanese Palace. The exhibition was called “Café Belarus II: Cassandra Complex”—it included graphics, installations, video art, and performances.

Tonya had a separate major exhibition in Poland in the spring of 2024.

I was selected for a strong exhibition in Prague. I couldn’t attend in person, but my works were included. It was a kind of traveling exhibition, opening in a new location each time. And for the first time, Belarusian artists participated.

But, you know, this isolation I talked about—it shows up in unexpected ways. We recently spent a few days at an exhibition, and afterward, I kept coughing. That’s really unusual for me, but I understand why it happened. We’ve been living so closed off for so long that suddenly spending days surrounded by crowds of people became a huge stress. Can you imagine? Something that used to be routine, just part of life—now it’s overwhelming.

What helps you to preserve yourself as an artist?

I don’t allow myself to dwell on the idea of being “in art.”

I mean, I don’t permit myself the usual artist’s introspection—about my themes, my artistic language, my place in the art world. I try not to think about my contribution to the 2020 protests, about what I meant for Belarusian contemporary art. I try not to evaluate or measure any of it, because my greatest fear is falling into resentment.

I’ve seen examples of undervalued Belarusians—people who feel that way. I fear those thoughts, that self-identification, that way of life that comes with it.

A Belarusian sculptor visited me recently. He still lives and works in Belarus. It’s unimaginable—it’s real underground resistance, happening right now, in the 21st century. He told me about the most important exhibition of his life, in Minsk. He collects his works outside the city, photographs them, then takes them apart. Everything is anonymous—he doesn’t even sign them.

That’s an incredible path to me. That’s resistance from inside the regime.

But I’m in a different situation. I’m not inside the regime. My ways of surviving are different. I’ve lowered all my previous expectations in every possible way. My wife and I are literally asking ourselves: Do we stay artists, or do we start painting fences?

We’re on the edge of a serious decision—whether to change ourselves professionally, to break our lives apart, or not.

And then there’s this stubborn artist’s nature, and at the same time, just human laziness—the reluctance to shift my mind toward something else, like painting fences. And that laziness, that reluctance—it’s stronger than my survival instinct. I’m too lazy to restructure my life. And that’s what keeps me here.

I’ve turned off the vanity setting—I truly don’t care what anyone thinks of me anymore. It’s a path toward humility—almost monastic in a way: just don’t ask yourself what art is without you.

I’ve started repeating old works—that too feels like a monastic practice. I’m shedding perfectionism—who cares who paints a finger, a nose, an eye better? I’m trying to turn off that setting—the pathos, the devotion, the torment. Maybe this is how I’m preparing myself to let go—it’s a good spiritual practice. I’ve already tried everything. Maybe the only thing that keeps me going as an artist is the hope that this situation is temporary. It’s better to preserve yourself without the things that torment you—money, vanity.

And these ascetic practices of mine.