Yuri Leiderman

Two men sit at a table while a third holds a flag on which is written in Russian: "Down with Putin the Oppressor." The work "To 'Kapiton' Group" refers to the situation of migrant artists and questions the political role of art.

The title of the work has a concrete point of reference. The man with the flag is the artist himself, and the two men at the table are the other members of "Kapiton" - Vadim Zakharov and Andrej Monastyrski. The group's name is a reference to the historical Kapiton Group formed by sixteenth-century religious dissidents.

"It is only outside the oppressor's sphere of control that this work can be shown, although as a result it loses some of its political explosiveness. While one of the artists has climbed a rickety construction at great risk in order to display his slogan, the two others are sitting and discussing. We want to ask: Is the conversation political? Is this rickety construction really a good location for political action? Or is this perhaps a poetic action rather than a political one?" (From the catalogue for the exhibition "How German is it? 30 Artists' Notion of Home")

Yuri Leiderman was born in Odessa in 1963 and lives and works in Berlin and Moscow.