She is nicknamed the “conscience of Saint Petersburg” and opposes all war: Elena Osipova, a 77-year-old painter, presented an exhibition of her pacifist placards on Tuesday in the former Russian imperial capital, in the midst of conflict in Ukraine .
Inaugurated in the premises of the local branch of the Yabloko opposition party in the presence of around thirty people, the exhibition brings together 15 signs created by Ms. Ossipova between 2014 and 2022.
Among them is the one entitled “The eyes of conscience”: we see the face of a little girl with big eyes, and a sentence at the bottom of the sign, in Russian and Ukrainian, “Mom, I’m afraid of the war”.
“It’s an anti-war exhibition, it’s tragic,” comments the artist to his audience, whose age forces him to sit down quickly. “It’s a repentance, even if no one in our country wants to repent at the moment,” she adds.
According to Alexander Chichlov, head of the local branch of the Yabloko party, not all of the artist’s works could be presented at the exhibition, due to Russian laws providing for heavy penalties for those who disseminate “false information on the army or attempt to “discredit” it.
Some placards “contain words for which one could be fined or face something worse,” he said.
Ms. Ossipova has been known for several years as a fierce opponent of Vladimir Putin’s policy and especially of any kind of armed conflict.
She had come out with a pacifist sign for the first time in 2002, after the hostage taking of the Dubrovka theater in Moscow by Chechen fighters.
Since then, few protest actions in St. Petersburg have taken place without her.
Arrested several times by the police, she often sees her signs confiscated.
For Sergei, 40, one of the first visitors to the exhibition, “as long as there are people like Elena Osipova, there is hope”.
31/01/2023 19:17:07 – Saint Petersburg (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
