Sprachrohr – words of political prisoners
A tribute to Mariya Kalesnikava
04/24/2025-08/31/2025
STUTTGART
vhs Stuttgart
Treffpunkt Rotebühlplatz
Mariya Kalesnikava has been a political prisoner in Belarus since 2000, along with 1,500 other people. The harsh prison conditions have affected her health to such an extent that we fear for her life. In this situation, Nikola Lutz launched the Internet platform freemascha.org in 2022 and the mem.cont.act project in 2023. Both projects keep her memory alive in the public sphere. mem.cont.act created a resonance space through an installation in public space, where participants could contribute their own words and images live on site or via the internet. Many of these were created under political conditions that made it impossible to speak publicly. Sprachrohr presents a selection of such contributions, as well as statements by the prisoners themselves, touching testimonies of creativity and will to live that reached us in the form of letters or pictures and tell of psychological survival in prison. Among them are 10 letters by Kalesnikava and 3 paintings by the Chilean musician Lukax Santana, who was also a political prisoner during the Pinochet dictatorship. The exhibition also includes a poem by Natasha López, calligraphies by Ichizu Hashimoto and commentaries by mem.cont.act participants from around the world.
Sprachrohr is a collection of individual commentaries on a situation of massive use of violence as a political method. From simple outcries to astute analyses of the highest artistic quality, they are all united by the absolute necessity to break the silence. In the face of injustice and the feeling of sheer overwhelming powerlessness, Sprachrohr keeps a space of communication open and prevents forgetting. The exhibition is an act of solidarity with all those who are brutally silenced by criminal governments in their own countries. The public is given an idea of a hermetic world and is invited to become an active part of this public memory, which is now the only possible protection we can give these prisoners. It is an important and effective protection to which everyone can contribute, even if we can neither free the prisoners nor guarantee their survival.
special thanks to: Verena Boos