Russian artist given year of correctional labour for doll featuring ‘prison symbolism’ 

A court in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk has sentenced artist Vasily Slonov to a year of correctional labour for using criminal symbolism in his work, regional news channel TVK reported on Tuesday.

Slonov, a well-known political artist who has fallen foul of the Russian authorities in the past, was convicted of using prohibited symbols in one of his works, a doll with prison tattoos. 

According to investigators, the eight-pointed star visible on the piece is a symbol used by the Russian AUE criminal subculture, the initials in which stand for Prisoner and Criminal Unity. The AUE was declared an extremist organisation in 2020.

Slonov said that he was “doubly shocked” that the court had ruled that the artwork in question be destroyed, adding that he believed his artworks belonged “in the Hermitage or the Russian Museum”.

A criminal case against Slonov was opened on 9 February after law enforcement officers searched his home and studio, seizing computers and a phone. Slonov was subsequently detained at Krasnoyarsk Airport when attempting to fly to Kazakhstan.

The police initially filed a report on Slonov in October when his doll artwork was displayed in a Krasnoyarsk hotel. He was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 rubles (€10).

Slonov first attracted the displeasure of the Russian authorities in 2013 for an artwork he made satirising the Sochi Winter Olympics, which led to Slonov being excluded from a group show in the city of Perm. A decision by curator Marat Guelman to exhibit the piece at the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art instead led to Guelman’s subsequent dismissal.