Contemporary Oppositional Art in Russia

This book focuses on an artistic tactic from the late Soviet underground called “shimmering,” characterized by rapid shifts between various opposing perspectives and ideologies, with the artist embracing all and betraying all in turn.

The Moscow Conceptualists designed shimmering to avoid repeating what they saw as the fatal flaw of the Soviet avant-garde: the collusion between artistic and political authority. Shimmering was intended to prevent artists from ever slipping into authoritarianism, making their words, works and selves slippery instead. Inspired by American Pop Art’s nonchalant critique of the hegemonic visuality of capitalism, Moscow Conceptualists forged shimmering to similarly represent Soviet official culture. Daniil Leiderman traces how shimmering developed from experiments with painterly space exploring the contentious legacy of the Soviet avant-garde, to re-negotiations of the artist’s relationship to their own authority, ultimately becoming a model for constructing new social collectives, outside the norms of Soviet society. The author argues that shimmering remains an important tactic for dismantling hierarchical power in contemporary Russian protest art.