With the help of traditional embroidery, the artist shows the oppression of people in Belarus with the help of traditional embroidery
Belarusian artist Rufina Bazlová has been creating traditional embroidery paintings since the summer of 2020 in response to state brutality in suppressing mass protests after the presidential election in her homeland. Stylized images began to spread rapidly over the Internet, and hundreds of demonstrators saw them as symbols of resistance and democratic revolution in Belarus.
The paintings are created with red thread on a light linen background. White in the embroidery symbolizes purity, light and freedom, red is a symbol of life, blood, sun and good. Embroidery was a specific code of writing information about the life of a nation or the life of a particular person who wears the embroidery. The artist deliberately works with folk art techniques traditionally associated with women’s work, thus referring to the role of women in the resistance against the dictatorial regime.
The embroidery captures scenes of militants dragging people into police antons, striking batons against demonstrators, dragging the wounded, or being trapped in wire-wounded territory on the Polish-Belarusian border. All the scenes represent a tiny embroidery of geometric shapes, but elaborated into the finest details.
The exhibition has its opening today at 18:00 at the Scout Institute on the Old Town Square. The project is being implemented in cooperation with Amnesty International Czech Republic, which will present a petition for the immediate release of Valjancin Stefanovič, Uladzimir Labkovič, Nina Labkovičová and Ales Bjaljacký, human rights defenders.
“The human rights crisis in Belarus has been going on for almost a year and a half. The regime is becoming increasingly repressive, people remain only because they exercise their right to peaceful protest, they are sentenced to heavy punishment. Unfortunately, our society is slowly getting used to it and we do not see the possibility of change in Belarus. This exhibition and the problems they provide can help spread information about current events in Belarus and encourage people in the Czech Republic to demand active action from the government and political representation, “said Yevgeny Bernstein of Amnesty International.