Olezha's art portfolio
First and last name: Agafonov Olezha
Date of birth: 20.09.1996 (25 y.o.)
Gender: non-binary gender fluid
Contact information: +4915146398806 [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/hawids/
Education: 2012 -2017 engineer electrician
My artistic journey is about reflecting upon the fights that queer people and immigrants are forced into. It's about setting ourselves free from the cults and cult-ish ideas. It's about refusal and rest, about research and discoveries, about bodies and identities, about transitions. And it's definetely about using plenty of different media at once and intersecting them altogether.
I do that for the queers that surround me physically or digitally, I do that to prove that art has no limits.
Here you can find all the different media and works that I did to express my frustration with the current systems.
It started with writing and poetry at a young age. As I graduated college I was very serious about photography and video works, which slowly introduced me to a world of performance art. I started to create clothing (balaclavas specifically) and expressing myself through looks. That lead to me posing as a model for other photographers, journalists and videomakers. I also used interviews to channel my queer story. Somewhere in between I found LARPs (live action role play) as the new art media. During pandemic I also started writing stories about my sex life and texts on certain social and personal topics (mostly in Russian). To deal with the political distress I also created memes. And as the last but not least come my sound works.
The list of works
1. Art-performance 'Names of the oppressed'
Belarus 2018, Minsk, museum of Zair Azgur
During the Mark's residency as one of the closing elements of it I co-created a performance act. I stood in the middle of the exhibition space with a naked torso and wrote names of the politically oppressed Belarusians (queers) using red lipstick. After I had written a few names I silently offered lipstick to the viewers and many continued to write names of the same kind. One of them wrote a name of the gay man Michail Pistchevsky that was killed in Minsk during a homophobic attack. Another mentioned the name of the so-called 'terrorist' executed by the authorities in 2012 after the metro explosion. The space itself was a high ceiling room with sculptures of soviet era leaders mostly (Lenin, Stalin).
I was interested in exploring how artist's body can interact with the space and people in it how the general feeling of it can transfer into the political substance of the writings. I also wanted to bring attention to those personalities.
You can read about the Mark's residency here (in russian):
https://minsknews.by/arthaus-diafilmyi-i-dzhaz-zachem-idti-v-muzey-azgura/
Plus there was a publication in now famous newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussiya
And here is the photo of what happened by Violetta Savchits:
2. Photoshoots and art-video (for other people)
In 2019 I helped shoot and produce these 2 videos for a poet Hanna Komar. Each was created for a specific poem of hers.
The first one is called 'a Doll' and it tells a story of physicall abuse endured by a doll. Visually we chose to play with themes of simple hand moves and shadow theater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ7NgcLexf4
The second one is 'Anna's Idiots' and is inspired by Lars von Triers movie. I co-created it with Alina Stiatsova, belarusian artist, feminist and activist. It is focused on Josephine character and explores a topic of daughter-father relationship. Visually we decided to mimic the esthetic of Lars von Triers cinematic work, plus put emphasis on the woman's body. This work blooms at the intersection of feminist optics, cultural context of the Lars's movie and a personal domestic abuse story of Hanna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpbyRo8fTo
As a photographer I worked in Minsk in 2018-2019. All photos were only published on my instagram account. Mostly I made some portraits:
I also photographed some events, most of them being LARPs or exhibition openings:
During that time I also created interview-style videos about the people surrounding me in Minsk at that time.
This is a video about Brestkaya Sh., she creates very interesting embroidery and in the video I wanted to give her space to talk about all the different aspects of her works and how it relates with her personal story (in russian only):
As I went on with experiments around my looks and clothing there started to appear an interest from my fellow photographers to capture the birth of queernes. It ended up as series of photos with me being a nonbinary model in them, challenging the ideas of how a person can act and look like in public spaces. The main group we targeted with these works was of course queer people. The pictures were published only on Instagram. Unfortunately no other resources were available for us at that moment.
Kseniya @urbanparadox works with film photography - we wanted to capture some queer temporalities that I experienced at that time, and played with gender stereotypes
Aliaksandra Sauchanka @alicsasha took multiple photos of me during 2019-2020 helping to document my queer journey at that time. One of the most interesting collaborations being this series from the Zhdanovichi thrift market where all the poor queer people were usually shopping. But also the place itself was filled with people preaching traditional values, that contrast played the main subject of the shoot.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5N93IAjSAQ/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5faG44IMqp/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Another 2 times that Sasha captured me when I was prepairing for 2 different parties in Minsk, both being the only actual queer events there at the time: Petushnia and KeepMinskWeird: Vampire ball. On both pics I had been wearing some clothing pieces including balaclavas made by me.
One of the last pics she took was at a Minsk protest march in September 2020 when I wore a skirt to a protest, here is the link to a post with the story:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CS6jwVyoBdy/
Varya @shiv.aph made the following shoot happen in the late 2020 as the protest movement in Belarus got shut down and more people were leaving the country. On that day we turned my flat into a photo studio where we again experimented with me wearing all the different clothing and shoes and not binding to any gender stereotype, this time I was also joined by other queer people. Unfortunately, this shoot also has never been published anywhere except social media.
During the start of the pandemic in 2020 one of my friends documented me publicly wearing a statement against Russian war in Ukraine. ПТНХЛО was a symbol of protest in Ukraine since 2014 and I made a coat with it in 2020 in order to bring attention to what's happening there and how it's connected with the current politics in Belarus also. The most dangerous part of the intervention and shoot was when I lied down in front of a tank in the downtown Minsk. Luckily we weren't arrested.
I wore the coat multiple times after as a sign of protest. I took it with me when moving to Kyiv and gave it to my friend Nastya, an LGBTQI activist from Moldova. She wore it at the Pride march in Kyiv in 2021 and got photographed, that way at the time we showed the intersection of goals and narratives of queer people being against imperialist russian war. And how a single piece of clothing can affect the narrative:
5. Music video 'Pleasure' for Belarusian singer Bakey
I took part as one of the characters in the music video. In it I was naked and performed some erotic and sexual acts with a friend of mine at the time. The video in general was focused on showing the diversity of love and pleasure that people can experience. It includes different types of pairs engaging into sensual interactions. Through that I continued to experiment with how queer bodies can be displayed in the public sphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpla23cgWPk
6. Interviews about my life story.
This interview was taped in Kyiv at the end of 2021. In it I mainly focused on the history of my family and them choosing to become part of the religious cult. I talk about my past/current relationships with religion and how my queerness became the freeing ticket. Interview was shot by Sasha Elbaum, journalist and videomaker from Belarus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXisTytRNX8
There is one more interview taken by the journalist and photographer Tanya Svirepa (my long time friend and collaborator with whom we did a series of photos about little towns surrounding Minsk, it never got published though). During the interview I also was photographed by Tanya in different types of outfits that I wore at the time. I talked about my personal queer-becoming story and added some political statements on Putin and war in Ukraine:
https://gpress.info/2020/08/26/ya-ugnetjonny-no-eto-normalno/
7. 'Balaclavdia' balaclavas and clothing made out of trash and used on a queer body
The results of this were used by me at many public events in Minsk and Kyiv, but the main place where I showcased them was in the projects instagram account. The project is ongoing and I will continue to 'make trash great again'.
https://www.instagram.com/balaclavdia/
One of the works also got published in the queer zine made by the belarusian group of activists (due to safety reasons it is only available online):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xQf2P21gBphSYIr3u56TNicf-JPeva8n?usp=sharing
Starting in 2019 I made a number of balaclavas using the materials which are usually thrown away as trash. I documented the work using photographs via the instagram account. In the account I also added a text to each of the balaclavas, each text explained what exactly was the balaclava made from and what that meant in a political and social context of my work.
Balaclavdia is a land where trash gets all the attention, where trash is a political statement and a lifestyle.
The idea and concept for the project comes from trying to find commonalities between how the queer bodies are treated and censured by the society and how the same happens to trash. Over time queer and trash become synonyms. Balaclavas are also a sign of protest for many movements. They represent the desire to hide our queer faces from the government systems. Putting a trashy balaclava on a queer face is an ultimate act of rebellion. Also these works became my signature and helped me get recognised by the queer-artistic community.
This project is a set of digital sound works which are mainly published on my soundcloud page. I also play them during the DJ sets that I make sometimes:
https://soundcloud.com/olezhax
I started working with the sound bites once the pandemic started. I threw away all my doubts on whether I am allowed to do that or not. I started with searching for the recordings made by the cult that I grew up in. The recordings were actual religious songs and prayers sang by a choir. Once I found them I started clipping and mixing them using the simpliest software I knew. I never used and never plan to use the sophisticated Ableton program for this cuz it will ruin the process for me.
The whole process of creation and publication in this project is about rethinking the past and reframing it in a way that doesn't contradict with current values. I take what already exists and has a meaning and bend it to my will. This is a manifestation of taking back control over the sonic landscape that I exist in. Later on I also started doing political statements in the tracks, for example this track 'We must kill dictators':
https://soundcloud.com/olezhax/we-must-khill-dictators
If trying to set any genre around these works I would love them to be placed alongside other noise and experimental works of fellow artists.
This LARP was designed and mastered by me twice in Minsk at the 'Second Floor' art-space. It was hosted as a part of local LARP festival organised by POST (educational belarusian organisation that was closed down by the authorities in 2021). It can be played again using the following script (it is in russian but can be translated and adapted).
The 2 times that it was hosted it wasn't properly documented. So right now it exists as a script and an experience in players memories.
Here is the announcement and the actual script:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8_p1SDnzTq
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nkdIHjPpy8vuruBpHrS2ZJzwN9tTT7f8sPByG8i5Klk/edit?usp=sharing
The main topic that I wanted to touch on and research in this work was the discrimination inside a discriminated group. But I also wanted to create a space-time entity in which queer and non-queer people could have fun and learn something from eachother about the ways we can fight oppressions. The game was filled with allusions and references to important local and global LGBTQ+ figures, moments and cultural pieces.
The number of participants: 8-18
Here is a shortened synopsis: What to do if you are part of a cult? Why gay-psychics love cabbage so much? How are we still able to walk here? You will be able to answer these and some other questions during the game. If you want to spend time in a fun way and to understand why people need norms, then this LARP about a cult of gay-psychics is for you. In it you will find yourself in the absurd verbal surreal world with cabbage.
As a form of research and experiment since 2016 I created some videos picturing myself in them as some type of a new woke era blogger that tries to pitch towards progressive ideas. I shot and edited them myself and published them on YouTube channel. They were filled with different visual concepts supporting the main message. Some of the topics and elements of it are very serious and meaningful for me and some are pure irony.
Allergy to water (3:15) - 2016
Video consists of me telling a story (in russian) that I found online about a girl who was allergic to water. The main idea was to show that even the most obvious things in life can be taken from people. This way I wanted to highlight the experiences that people with disabilities have. And how our society is designed to limit them. It was also an attempt to be ironic about the 'be thankfull' narrative which got popularised by some psychologists at that time, but appeared to be quite ignorant towards the realities of our world. Visually I tried to mimic the esthetique of classic explanatory videos popular at that time on YouTube.
This short clip puts a twist on the motivational and inspirational content that was wide spread in the english speaking part of YouTube at that time, but wasn't represented much in the Russian speaking area. So the video is an attempt to transfer those ideas into a new environment. Creating such weird videos at the time helped me combat systemic oppressions that I was dealing with. It is also quite ironic cuz at the time I wasn't out of the closet with myself and didn't feel connected to my own self at all. It's very telling of how such type of the content was produced by people who haven't lived up to the ideas they were offering.
There are days when you wake up (8:46) - 2019
In this work I tried to experiment with showing and talking about all the different self-states that I experience. The video was created to visually challenge the idea of a rigid identity. To show how one's self can go through muptiple transitions. It’s very telling on its own.
I publish all my texts in this telegram channel, most of them are written in russian:
When reviewing the texts that I write I can divide them into multiple groups.
The most entertaining and creative one being a set of sexual and romantic stories. They reflect a wide range of queer experiences that I had over time living as an openly queer person in Minsk, Kyiv and etc.
Another group of texts is my attempt to explain more on how did the cult I was born into looked like from the inside. And then of course putting it right next to the social and political contexts of today. This way showcasing how personal individual experience of a religious oppression reflects a wide range of structures and transitions that many other people had to undergo.
And the last group are essays on different topics that bother me from time to time. Here is one of the examples that I wrote back in 2020 on the topic of necessity of labor:
https://teletype.in/@olezha/nojob
12. Political memes with Olga Karach
The results of this project were published on this telegram channel:
Most of the memes were created during the 2021 spring and summer as an outlet for the frustration with the results of the political movement in Belarus. The repressions hit everyone really hard. Most of my friends started leaving the country and I found comfort in watching muptiple political analytics channels and bloggers. One of them was Olga Karach. At the time and still to this day she is the only left leaning leader that speaks to the concerns that I have. In some way she became representative of queernes in the media sphere for me. Through humor I was able to get through that hard time in my own very specific way. Most of those memes will not be understood by the general public and they are not supposed to. In this project the same as with sound experiments I decided to take back control over the visual and comedy landscape that I exist in.
Most of the memes were also co-created with my friend and fellow artist Hleb Kovalsky: https://www.instagram.com/kvlski/
13. Public intervention 'Becoming child again' documented by K+P
The video below is capturing an intervention act I did in a public park in Berlin.
It happened as a part of the rehearsal for the upcoming movie by directors duo K+P.
The initial idea was to allow me to do something that brings relief after being displaced multiple times. I remembered that when I was little we were playing with flowers and making little dolls out of them. Another thing that popped up to me was stone collecting and competition. These memories brought me into a time when nothing really bothered me. I tried to recreate those activities as I recollected them in my mind. I tried to become that careless child again.
The video captures that unique journey of a displacement and relief happening in the park with children around me. Relief in this case meaning relieving childhood experiences and feelings.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JldVPPt5_KiksFDsuCPkGFQRYlMdFj-M/view
Also right now I have a few other works in the development stage. Among them - poetry collection, a movie about relief with K+P duo and a new freshly designed LARP experience.