This document summarizes the history and projects of the Bobo art group from St. Petersburg, Russia from 2015-2022. It describes their early apartment exhibitions and biennials held as jokes and for fun. It discusses the group moving locations several times and changing names as the political climate in Russia changed. It highlights some of their exhibitions that touched on themes of war, politics, and poverty. The document shares photos and details of artists who participated in Bobo exhibitions from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Sweden, US and Brazil. It discusses one of their friends who is now a political prisoner in Russia.

1. bobo
st p, mordor
2015-2022

2. thank you jesus, social sciences and
humanities research council of canada and
maria silina for this escapist opportunity in
this terrible times of war to talk on art and
the non-orthodox ways to present it

3. anna isidis, artist
you only need a
sofa to start an
art residency
and even less to
start a gallery

4. bobo
art
group
photo by elena lukyanova

5. 1 pulpit 2 bobo 3 v moyey yame {in my pit} 4 shoooshooo {chouchou}

6. the biennal of the rejected
(spring 2015)

7. we started in 2015 as a joke and having fun continued to be our main goal
in making apartment exhibitions. irony and self-irony used to be one of
the key components in the most of our projects. several serious and even
tragic pieces can be considered an exclusion. the idea to start an art space
was of anna isidis, an artist from st p.
the biennial of the rejected was a response to some exhibition of our
colleagues who gathered together and made some open air exhibition
calling it “an environmental biennale” dealing with themselves with a
caricature seriousness. so we decided to drink beer and dance and call it a
biennale. then we found some labels of an absent old diapositifs. we stick
it to the wall making an imaginary exhibition as a party trick.
then we had a look at a trash can in the art studio in a psychoneurological
asylum where we used to work with delphina at the moment. we decided
to exhibit them and came up with this title “rejection squared” cause
those were the rejected works of the rejected individuals (see the photos
of PNI under qr-code)
we finished up selling out almost all the paintings taking the money for
the needs of the art studio.
1 pulpit

8. the first home exhibition
“the biennal of the
rejected” included the
works from the trash
pack of the perspektivy
art studio (which were
mostly sold during the
exhibition), collective
video-art piece of the
residents and
installations.
‘bobo’ group restarted in
their toilet room the
“tolchok vperyod” (push
forward) gallery of the
young art which was
founded in the toilet
room of summer bar – a
key point of saint
petersburg underground
scene of 2013. this
gallery still is functioning
successfully.
photos by vadim f lurie
and work4food project.
biennal’s map
photo: vadim f lurye

10. the examples of the diploma
given to the participants of the
creative kitchen workshops 2015
“the kitchen kurozhnique {cu-
rator+artist=curartist} school”

11. february 27 we were having a party
when the news arrived that boris
nemtsov, one of the key figures in
russian political protest scene was
murdered.
“smells like uganda” someone said.
the party was soon over

12. 2. bobo
then we had to move as the landlord sold out the pulpit apartment. we
found a cheap but gloomy flat in so-called dostoyevsky’ triangle – the
bloc where the writer used to live while making his cheuf d’oeuvres
including “crime and punishment”. dostoyevsky changed literally
dozens of flats there looking for the cheapest one. possibly he could
even live in that of ours.
we had two events there, an exhibition (a biennale of course) and a,
say, festival called “sex and death in your kitchen”. which was even
more pure escapism and fun than we had before and with strong erotic
fluids

13. the “sex and death in your kitchen”
home performance art festival
the festival took place on 6 may 2016 and
included 3 live performances:
“rest. 24 hours rest. relax” – an anti sex-
work’s advertisments project by daria
apakhonchich.
“the impossibility of love in your kitchen” –
live participatory performance by alyona
petite
“the blind owl” interactive performance of
‘bobo’ group feat. max evstropov.

14. 3. in my pit
bobo apartment sold an we move on again, this time
to the most gorgeous place I ever had in st p and
again not far from dostoyevsky’s home. but this was
of his late rich and famous years. there we had I
believe three exhibitions, first of them involving
another friends’ apartment titled “biennale on the
bloq” {biennale na rayone}
another was a big international exhibition ‘art onto
face’ where colleagues from ukraine took part/ those
were anya scherbina and vladimir topiy which I highly
recommend you as an extremely talented
individuals. vladimir then continued to send his
works for our apartment projects and I believe I can
call him a friend who supports me even in these
terrible times of fascist aggression of russia against
ukraine
i won’t tell much more and address you to the
catalogue (unfortunately mostly in russian) under qr
photo: vadim f lurye

15. photo: david frenkel
{rodina} art group. the acceptance. 2018

16. tsoi fired
the last exhibition in my pit
marked tragic events that
caused my detention from the
charity art studio in the asylum I
mentioned, where the
testimonies of violent acts and a
possible murder of a resident,
an artist daniil rekhtin, took
place. I have put the kafkian
bureaucracy docs alongside
with artworks that the studio
participants gave me as good-
bye presents. in 2021 we moved
this project to a more public
space in st p, an activist hub
“open space” but leaving only
the murdered rekhtin’s works
and the documents.
bobo art group made a
performance there : delphina
tattooed a phrase “kunst macht
nicht frei” on cyanide zloy’s
chest while the ongoing
discussion on the subject of
PNI’s with the public.

17. #freekorolev
i must mention that one of the guests of
that discussion, a good friend of our family
and gallery, a philosopher, a poet and
cinematographist vsevolod korolev is now a
political prisoner. he is facing 5-10 years of
prison for his texts on the war crimes of
russian army in bucha and other cities of
ukraine. he also used to work in the same
PNI asylum as a volunteer. more details on
the case under qr

19. 4. shoooshooo
{chouchou}
another change of location and
change of the political climate in
russia which became less and less fun
changed the face and name of the
project. shoooshooo gallery
{ironically} found home in the native
apartment of anna isidis where she
did not want to live because of the
ugly childhood memories.
nevertheless the two exhibitions we
had in there reached rather wide
international scale and as we can see
attracted professional attention.
the end of the world involved a little
less then 30 artists from 6 countries
(ukraine, belarus, russia, sweden, usa,
brazil). the title was inspired by
pandemic of covid the terrible, but the
topics of war and political terror were
also touched in many works
david frenkel. covid victim’s funeral, 2020

20. natalita
andrushaewa
cronus
2020
tour eng
tour fra
tatiana trapeznikova’s
works in the
exhibition space

21. tour fra
aleksey kuzmich
advent 2. the apocalypse
the second part of the action “i have faith, or the philistine
world of political animals”
minsk, 2020

22. alexey krutskikh
from the ‘aurum’ series
#poverty had less authors but was also kinda
international and I now believe to be very important.
I want to mention the museum of edible earth (qr) as
it was presented there
recently I heard an interesting hypothesis proposed
by a sociologist igor yakovenko ___ photo qr, who
considers a controlled poverty to be one of the most
important tool of Russian fascist management.
holding the population in poverty the regime makes
it extremely dependent on the governmental
distribution of income. e.g. the mobilized troopers
get salary they would never have a chance to get in
peaceful (and poor) times. families are sometimes
content to get so-called coffin-money for a killed
relative. some historians also see parallels in the
similar governmental strategies of the --- golden
orda.

23. masharu
museum of edible earth
masharu’s collection of the probes of the
edible grounds from various locations all
over the globe contains more than 400
items. in our exhibition we offered only
those from the post-soviet territories
making putin’s metaphor of absorption of
post-soviet space literal.
what it really feels like when you have
ukraine’s soil instead of borshtch for
dinner?
we did not plan this gloomy joke to sound
prophetical back in 2021 before this wide-
scale aggression began

24. aidar bekchintayev
untitled
2022
yulia kosulnikova’s graphic works in the
exhibition space

25. cyanide
zloy

26. shirotadolgota.com aidar bekchintayev
syanda yaptik lidiya gribkova

27. thank you for
your attention
may the force
be with you