MAYANA NASYBULLOVA

In 2020, during the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and self-isolation, I created the installation "NOTHING HAPPENS AGAIN" in the exhibition hall of St. Petersburg. The work was dedicated to provincial melancholy but shed light on the overall relevance of that time: closed doors, canceled performances, hidden political decisions.

Two years later, Russia attacks Ukraine, occupies its territories, destroys the foreign and rewrites its own history. And here it all happens again. Again, it’s war. Again, a war that is not a war. Again, an operation, a campaign, a second campaign, a march, a revolt, a rampage, lawlessness. All these imperial narratives seem like a scratch on a record, throwing you back into the same moment of "righteous" bloodshed, behind which there is nothing left but submission to force.

And here I am in Berlin at an exhibition of Siberian artists, writing on red fabric:
"EVERYTHING HAPPENS AGAIN"
I write this because I am afraid, because it has all happened many times before: in Kazan, in Siberia, in Kalmykia, in Dagestan, in Boglagia, in Albania, in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Poland…
If this statehood continues to exist, IT will happen again.

I repeated this work in russian in Komarovo the same year at the Kurort Festival.