AZBUKA STRIKES BACK: Uladzimir Hramovich, “Soviet and post-Soviet Belarusian illustration: it says more than a history book!”, 2 June 2022, 6:30 PM
Uladzimir Hramovich sketches a history of Vozhyk – a hedgehog character and protagonist of the eponymous satirical publication – from the Second World War, through cold war era socialism to contemporary Belarus. Originating from a Smash Fascist Scum partisan magazine, Vozhyk inherits a critical and satirical viewpoint towards society. In one of the iterations in postsocialist Belarus, it becomes part of an exhausted official visual culture, depoliticized and recreative, but it also becomes ecologically aware, as seen in Chernobyl Vozhyk, and later as one of the speakers of self-organised protests in Belarus from 2020–2021.
Uladzimir Hramovich is a visual artist based in Gdansk and Berlin. He graduated from the graphic design department of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk, Belarus (2015). His practice is inspired by the history of modernist art and architecture and the transformation of the urban space in Minsk. He is interested in the tensions between past and present, the history of ideologies, of political movements, and the rituals of memory and monuments.
