Ales Pushkin
Curator, Painter, Performer
Belarus
Born on August 6, 1965, Ales Pushkin was a prominent Belarusian artist and former political prisoner whose bold artistic expressions and activism made him a key figure in the fight for freedom of expression in Belarus. Tragically, he died in custody on 11 July 2023.
Ales Pushkin was arrested on March 30, 2021, by officers of the Interior Ministry in the village of Žyličy, following a previous raid on his home just days earlier. He was implicated in charges related to the “desecration of state symbols” and “incitement to hatred,” stemming from his art that depicted Belarusian resistance figures. His most notable works included a controversial portrait of Yauhen Zhykhar, which the authorities mischaracterized as attempted rehabilitation of Nazism.
Despite facing severe repression for his art, including being sent for psychiatric evaluation and undergoing harsh treatment in custody, Pushkin remained unwavering in his beliefs. He was sentenced to five years in a maximum-security penal colony, where he staged a harrowing protest during his trial, revealing cuts on his abdomen in the shape of a cross. His actions symbolized the deep scars of repression inflicted upon Belarusian society.
Pushkin’s fierce commitment to his craft was evident in his audacious performances. In 2021, shortly before his arrest, he presented “Manure for the President” at an exhibition in Kyiv, where he poured red paint over a modified portrait of Alexander Lukashenko, symbolizing blood and the suffering of the Belarusian people. This act of defiance echoed a similar performance he staged back in 1999, when he confronted the presidential administration with a wheelbarrow of manure, which led to a suspended sentence.
His artistic activities led to his status as a political prisoner, and he experienced brutal conditions while imprisoned, including solitary confinement and a lack of medical care, which ultimately contributed to his untimely death due to complications from a perforated ulcer. His tragic passing occurred in an intensive care unit, underscoring the systemic negligence in the treatment of political prisoners in Belarus.
Artists at Risk Connection supported Ales Pushkin and his family following his death, highlighting the continuing struggle for artistic freedom and human rights in Belarus. Despite the oppressive regime’s attempts to silence him, Ales Pushkin’s legacy as a courageous artist and activist endures, inspiring those who continue to fight for freedom and justice in Belarus and beyond.
On July 21, 1999, when the constitutional term of the first president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko , expired, Pushkin rolled a red-painted wheelbarrow of manure to the entrance of the presidential administration in the center of Minsk , on which lay denominated Belarusian money and a sign thanking Lukashenko for his work. He added a portrait of Lukashenka, who was a state farm chief in the Soviet era, and drove a pitchfork through it.
On March 25, 1989, Ales Pushkin walked along Independence Avenue. On his back and chest hung posters reminding him of the Belarusian People's Republic, proclaimed exactly 71 years ago that day, and about a hundred of Pushkin's like-minded people followed him with a paper stork and 71 white balloons in their hands. Pushkin and 35 others were detained; he was sentenced to two years of suspended imprisonment
"Judgment Day". A fragment of the fresco of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the town of Bobr, Ales Pushkin's hometown. Pushkin considered the fresco to be his most important work. In the composition "Judgment Day" among the sinners, Pushkin depicted Alexander Lukashenko and the then Metropolitan Filaret surrounded by riot police. Later, the fresco was painted over, and in 2011 the church burned down.
Portrait of Yevgeny Zhikhar from the series "Belarusian Resistance", 2014. On March 26, 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus opened a criminal case against Pushkin due to the fact that an exhibition at the Grodno "Center for Urban Life" displayed Pushkin's portrait of Zhikhar, who was an anti-Soviet underground worker.
Ales Pushkin actively took part in the country’s 2020-2021 protests against longtime ruler Alexander Lukashenko and appeared in a famous photograph showing him waving the white-red-white flag of democratic Belarus while facing a wall of security officers. Pushkin was subsequently arrested in March 2021 amid the sweeping crackdown on dissent in the wake of the protests. In prison, he made dozens of drawings (including the three displayed above), which were given to his family.