Even Elephants Hold Elections

An exhibition by Pomidor Art Group

At Not For Sale Gallery, extended until Wednesday 2 October 2024, by appointment.

Even Elephants Hold Elections at Not for Sale Gallery

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…” said the character Syme to the protagonist Winston Smith, in George Orwell’s prescient Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. This timeless novel was primarily a response to the totalitarian nature of the Union of Socialist Republics (USSR) and of course Nazi Germany. Orwell understood the power of words and the power of authority to change the meaning of words. A forever war is going on in the novel, the role of Newspeak – the language of Oceania, is to strip language and words of its meaning, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”

Thursday 24 February 2022. I was bathing in the sun, on a beach, the land of my birthplace, Mauritius. My sister lying next to me was on her iPhone, “Russia’s invaded Ukraine”. We felt a shock, a jolt to our pristine family holiday in a sub-tropical island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Friends in the neighbourhood, jokingly seriously declared that World War 3 is upon us - don’t go back, stay in our little island 9,665 kilometres away from my new home in Hastings. This is a war too close to home.

In Putin’s Russia, Orwellian Newspeak is a Kremlin propaganda strategy to alter the perception of its citizens; the Russian war on Ukraine is not a war, it’s “the special military operation” (source: Ukraine Crisis Media Center, Russian “Newspeak” dictionary, July 2023).

source: Ukraine Crisis Media Center, Russian “Newspeak” dictionary, July 2023

Artists who publicly speak out against the “war”, the “invasion”, the “attack” (words that are banned in relation to the conflict) are thrown into prison: Anastasia Dyudyaeva, Aleksandr Dotsenko, Sasha Skochilenko know about the power of words, words that hold power to account, the misuse of words by authoritarian regimes to spread lies, disinformation and misinformation. All three artists are currently serving prison sentences in Russia for using words as political art. We in the west call “text-based art” – it sounds so anodyne.

The Pomidor Art Group are two Russian women artists, Polina and Maria who lived and worked in Moscow until 2022, both currently live in London. Their exhibition at Not for Sale Gallery in Hackney Wick, London is a thought-provoking installation comprising words, phrases, quotes stitched on fabric and hung like flags or banners from the ceiling. Their work is a new iteration of a great tradition of what Rozkika Parker called “The Subversive Stitch”, a book published in…Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sculpting an invisible architecture of pathways and soft, mobile walls of cloth, we move through the space like moving through the ghost of a building within a building (Not for Sale Gallery is on the 4th floor of what was probably once a factory space), echoes of destroyed space. I think of the bombings of buildings in Ukraine’s urban space, by the Russian army – or should I be saying “recently conscripted military personnel”?

Even Elephants Hold Elections at Not for Sale Gallery

“What would you do in my place?”, a banner asks us. This question invites us to embody this question, think it through, it’s a political question that reverberates not only in the context of the Russian war on Ukraine, but elsewhere…this exhibition was due to open at Meta Morphika, it was abruptly cancelled one day after the private view in July 2024.

Even Elephants Hold Elections at Not for Sale Gallery

Silence like a cancer grows…I imagine…What would you do in my place if Hackney Wick was attacked by Hamas who brutally slaughters 1100 people and abducts 250 people in the course of one day…it’s my personal thought experiment

Words off-end, words def-end…many galleries are unable to hold that dialogue, only one speech act is permitted. Thankfully Not for Sale Gallery came to the rescue, more power and courage to them.

“Silence like a cancer grows”…Simon & Garfunkel’s song is playing in my head since my visit, like a karaoke performance…I’m riffing on another dissident voice, the Croatian/former Yugoslav writer Dubravka Ugresic’s book that I recently read.

Poetic phrases haunt the space, balanced with banners embroidered with facts and portraits, news stories of Russian dissidents and activists who have been imprisoned, enemies of the state for criticising the Russian regime’s war on Ukraine. Some of these banners have hung outside of friends’ windows, probably not in Russia. The labour of the artists is not lost in making.

Even Elephants Hold Elections at Not for Sale Gallery

Russian words are subverted, re-played, re-purposed and re-shuffled as a means to escape the censors. Typographically that dangerous word PEACE is freed from Russian restrictions, it becomes ROME.

Even Elephants Hold Elections at Not for Sale Gallery

Paintings by Polina, one half of The Pomidor Group, are included in this show, hung on the back the walls of the space – abstract, darkly expressive they hint at beasts, hauntings, foreboding presence, devilish destruction.

Both language as medium, and painting are equally moving in this rare artist-led gallery, full of moral courage. We need more spaces like this.

Manick Govinda

Word Power