︎The series “We will build a brave new world” was first published as a set of illustrations that accompanied Tania Arcimovich’s essay “We will build a brave new world. On the status and the working conditions of an artist in Belarus” on Status Research Platform in 2019. Svyatogor’s vivid socio-fantastic images reflect on the artist’s anxiety-fueled liminal position in the contemporary post-Soviet Belaruisian labor market. Stuck in the dialectic of artmaking as neoliberal production (work) versus Soviet-typed ideological or dissident vocation (non-work), many of the artists are forced to endure radical financial instability, debasing work conditions, and disorienting socio-economic relations. For Svyatogor, this existential crisis becomes the creative source which inspires her to imagine a “brave new world” in which artists might define their own place and status in society.

Words by Aniko Szucs