Betty Roytburd‘s ‘Snegurochka’ solo exhibition was on view at Atlanta’s Good Enough, running March 9 to April 21.
The show’s colourful sculptures, garments and children’s animation at first have a childlike folktale benevolence. However, beneath the surface is a more sinister window into Russian-occupied Luhansk, Ukraine. The works draw from the symbolism of the Night Wolves, a nationalistic Russian Biker gang with active chapters in Ukraine who assist Russian separatists, as well as an episode of the Soviet animated television series Nu, pogodi! (Well, just you wait!) centring around a plotting wolf who seeks to catch a cleverly evasive rabbit.
The exhibition powerfully evokes this iconography in order to explore propaganda, politics and everyday life in Luhansk. As the exhibition text by Chris Fernald explains: “But for all the Wolves’ bluster and violence, their power is often surprisingly soft. As instruments of the Russian international and domestic propaganda machine, they throw parades, organize festivals, undertake cross-country rides—and even start rabbit farms… Nu, pogodi! The wolf never gives up on the rabbit.”**
Betty Roytburd’s exhibition Snegurochka, was on view at Good Enough, Atlanta from from March 9 to April 21, 2019.
