July 14, 2025

The "No" Exhibition


The "No" Exhibition
Flowers raised at the funeral of Alexey Navalny | Прикли Wikimedia Commons

Sunday, July 9, marked the end of the over two-month display of the “No” exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin. The exhibition’s title, “Нет” in Russian, succinctly reflects the project’s mission: resilience in the face of modern crises. The exhibition is a joint effort by a team of artists and Meduza, the online publication founded by Russian journalists in exile.

The exhibition featured nine sections: Dictatorship, Censorship, Exile, War, Resilience, Fear, Loneliness, Polarization, and Hope. Each housed three interrelated narratives: an essay, a piece of visual artwork, and a video interview related to the title subject.

A vast range of voices were represented across the project, all speaking to resistance. The category “Censorship,” for example, hosted a video narration from Galina Timochenko, the CEO of Meduza, in which Timochenko highlighted her journey with colleagues after leaving Russia in 2014, foreseeing a crisis of censorship, and their subsequent mission to deliver information to Russian speakers despite the repression of media outlets and the targeted arrests of journalists.

In the category “Hope,” a painting by artist Aleksey Dubinsky called “The First Day of Spring” depicts the crowd at the funeral of Alexey Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who died in 2024 in a Russian prison under suspicious circumstances. The funeral drew a crowd of tens of thousands. To reflect this, Dubinsky’s painting circles the length of the walls in its room, showing an extensive procession and highlighting hope in unity despite the profound loss.

Though the “No” exhibition has completed its run in Berlin, the artworks and interviews displayed are still featured online at the exhibition website. Meduza continues to report on Russia, and the many artists who collaborated on the exhibition continue their projects highlighting modern resistance.

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