They\u2019ve been imprisoned, tortured and spied upon. Now dissidents from Europe\u2019s last dictatorship are bringing the sights, sounds, smells and even tastes of brutal repression to the world\u2019s biggest festival of art<\/p>\n
In a studio down a residential road in west Warsaw, a group of former political prisoners are cutting golden stems of wheat to 90cm lengths and stacking them, ready to be shipped to the Venice Biennale. A giant ball made of books banned in the neighbouring country of Belarus \u2013 Harry Potter, Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an illustrated history of kink \u2013 rests on the claw of a bulldozer. There is the sound of laughter, organ music and an angle-grinder, as surveillance cameras are attached to a towering iron crucifix.<\/p>\n
This is Official. Unofficial. Belarus., the first major art project by Belarus Free Theatre (BFT)<\/a>. Unusually, this work by the exiled troupe has no performance element but has instead been created by painters, sculptors, composers and even the man recently voted world\u2019s best chef. Rasmus Munk has been concocting a dish at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Copenhagen that will taste of detention under an authoritarian regime, the subject of the entire installation. A scent has been commissioned, too: it will smell like a freshly dug grave in the Belarus countryside in late August, laid with rotting flowers.<\/p>\n
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