Betty
Roytburd
Snegurochka
9 March - 21 April 2019
Good
Enough
1469 Fairbanks St Sw
Atlanta, GA
Luhansk, Ukraine / Russian-occupied Luhansk, People’s Republic
of Luhansk
On the outskirts of the city, the camp is framed by a giant
rusting gate with a massive black paw at the center, metal silhouettes of
bikers atop motorcycles, and the numbers 14 and 23 — the former a
reference to the fourteen-word credo of white supremacists worldwide (“We
must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) and
the latter a nod to the twenty-three precepts governing the
Southern Brotherhood, the largest white supremacist prison gang in Alabama.
Beyond: rusting, hollowed-out cars lie alongside weapons caches in
a sea of mud. But among this
familiar detritus of war lies an unlikely
sight: a rabbit farm. Children. Families. Laughter.
A group of bikers pass rabbits into young hands.
__
In 1974, Soyuzmultfilm releases episode eight of cult Soviet
cartoon Nu, Pogodi. A scheming, hard-living wolf disguises himself as
Snegurochka, the benevolent granddaughter of Father Frost, to lure and catch a
cunning rabbit. In turn, the rabbit disguises himself as Father Frost, hoodwinking
the wolf and escaping his grasp. Nu, Pogodi— well, just you wait! — calls the
wolf as the episode ends.
Member patches
of Night Wolves chapters in Ukraine
With about 11,000 members worldwide, the Night Wolves are
Russia’s largest and most infamous biker gang. But to characterize the Night
Wolves as simply chest-beating petrolheads would be to woefully underestimate
them. Straddling a bizarre seam between militants and missionaries, the Night
Wolves are a crucial arm of Putin’s covert military operations in Eastern
Ukraine, which has become one of the most heavily militarized areas on Earth as
pro-Russian separatists—supported by the gang—fight to cede Ukrainian lands to Russia
and return the Motherland to her imperial glory.
But for all the Wolves’ bluster and violence, their power is
often surprisingly soft. As instruments of the Russian
international and domestic propaganda machine, they
throw parades, organize festivals, undertake cross-country rides— and even
start rabbit farms.
In Winter, around the turning of the new year, the Wolves stage
wild, pyrotechnic holiday performances, where the effigies of old stories and
familiar faces—Stalin, the Statue of Liberty, Orthodox saints, fallen
soldiers—share the stage with holiday folktale characters like the yuletide snow
maiden Snegurochka. The results are bizarro mash-ups of traditional folklore
and geopolitics - all-ages propaganda bonanzas.
In a recent holiday performance in Luhansk, the Statue of
Liberty is portrayed as a dancing snake-like villain with a striking
resemblance to the innocent Snegurochka. Lady Liberty joins forces with an
immortal skeleton king to steal Russia's soul, and the Wolves, donning oversize
wolf masks, storm the stage on their motorbikes and save the day. At the end of
the performance, “the prosecutor” –the leader of the Wolves in Luhansk-- waves
the flag of Novorossiya (“New Russia”), Russia’s proposed name for the
separatist-occupied “people’s republics” in Eastern Ukraine.
__
Nu, Pogodi! runs for another thirteen episodes, and is still
syndicated to this day. The wolf never catches the rabbit. It turns out each
episode ends in the same way— just you wait. The hare is warned. The wolf still
waits.
__
For some residents of the city, beleaguered by information
warfare and appeals to darker, nationalist impulses, they can bask in the
bright colors and pageantry that all but disappear in wartime, feel themselves
vanish into an imagined yesteryear of simple and straightforward morality in a
world built by the state. Bags of chocolate candies for the children and pints
for the adults. The Snow Maiden is resplendent in a fur dress and coat. She is
beautiful, kind, and innocent, a holiday princess. Good is good, evil is evil.
The spectacle – a Wolf in Snegurochka’s clothing -- appears on social media
platforms across Eastern Europe.
__
As Winter deepens and 2018 winds to a close, the tragedies and
traumas of the past four years weigh heavily on Luhansk. The twinkle of holiday
lights makes an odd bedfellow to a pervasive, sinking dread. An end to the war
and its attendant humanitarian crises, its thousands of casualties, feels desperately
out of grasp.
__
One day, some residents find the rabbit farm empty. It is later
rumored that the Wolves have slaughtered the rabbits for food and fur.
Nu, pogodi!
The wolf never gives up on the rabbit.
- Chris Fernald
~
Betty Roytburd (b.1989
Odessa, Ukraine) lives and works in New York. This is her second solo
exhibition following “Fountain of Youth” at Kimberly Klark in 2018. Other exhibitions
include group shows at 15 Orient, Gern en Regalia and Ben’s Books in Brooklyn,
New York, and her 2016 collaborative project with Filip Olszewski, “Disaster in
Potato Valley.” Her writing has been featured in Arcadia Missa’s “How To Sleep
Faster 8.”