On August 17, Alice nello spazio latente will open the exhibition "The Parajanov Battalion," which explores themes of transnational solidarity, identity, war, and militarism through the prism of queer experience.
The project’s name refers to Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990), a queer Soviet filmmaker and artist who was imprisoned in the 1970s for homosexuality. An Armenian born in Georgia who later lived and worked in Ukraine and Russia, Parajanov was a quintessentially cosmopolitan cultural figure, deeply connected to multiple geographies and influential both within and beyond Soviet borders. By invoking his name, the project pays homage to a form of queer transnationalism embodied by figures such as Parajanov himself.
As its point of departure, “The Parajanov Battalion” draws on a collection of unused Soviet-era military identity cards that Yevgeniy Fiks purchased on eBay in 2022. Manufactured in the 1980s, these documents were never used for their intended purpose, as the state their owners were meant to defend ceased to exist shortly thereafter. Untouched yet charged with unrealized militaristic potential, the cards remain crisp and pristine, appearing less like historical memorabilia than relics of a future that never arrived.
In 2024, Fiks initiated “The Parajanov Battalion” by sending these military identity cards to an international group of queer artists, inviting them to reflect on the intersections of nationalism, queerness, and militarism. Although the cards originate from a specific historical and geographic context, the project does not focus exclusively on Soviet experiences. Instead, it presents queer perspectives on militarism and conflict across diverse geographies and political realities.
While a battalion conventionally denotes a military formation, the battalion envisioned here is a non-military collective of queer artists. In times of war and geopolitical conflict, queer communities are often divided by national borders and pressured to relinquish forms of transnational solidarity. This tension between nationalism, militarism, and queerness forms the conceptual foundation of “The Parajanov Battalion”.
Participating artists:
Aika Akhmetova, Finn aka Animal Bro, Narek Arushanyan, Babi Badalov, David Bernstein, Avram Finkelstein, Seroe Fioletovoe, Maya Garcia, Masha Godovannaya, Noam Gonick, Juliet Jacques, Kārlis Vērdiņš and Rute Marta Jansone, Lasse Lau, Angelo Plessas, Giorgi Rodionov, Andrey Shental, Katharina Wiedlack, Vadym Yakovlev, and Shana Ye.
Yevgeniy Fiks (born in 1972 in Moscow, USSR) reflects on the dialectical relationship between Soviet socialism and ‘the West’, the legacies of international communism and histories of sexual and gender dissent. His personal projects include “Mister Deviant, Comrade Degenerate”, Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ (2019); “Monument to Cold War Victory” (with Stamatina Gregory), The Cooper Union, New York (2014); “Homosexuality Is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America”, Winkleman Gallery, New York (2013); “Communist Tour of MoMA” (Performance), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), among others. He also participated in numerous group exhibitions at various institutions, including Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), Museu Colecção Berardo (Lisbon), and Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Fiks lives and works in New York.
Alice nello spazio latente is an “underwater” artists’ run space in Venice, found by Alice Vongola and Arsen Zhilyaev, which focuses on experimental projects by artists from the Veneto and neighboring regions, Italy in general, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, as well as on Russian dissident art, exploring the possibilities of achieving peace in the universe through conceptual practices and patamathematical methods of exhibition production.
