December 13 – January 17, 2016 
Sunday Dec 13 @ 5-8PM | Opening reception | Meet the artists | Join for a conversation with Masha Alyokhina

Participating Artists:

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Recycling Religion examines the role of religion in Russia and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet empire. Paradoxically in the modern age, the once repressed and dormant Orthodox Church has evolved in the past quarter century to become an intrinsic and powerful extension of the State, commanding broad influence over life beyond its purely spiritual role. 

From art and entertainment to dress code, and numerous other aspects of personal behavior, this essentially anachronistic religion insinuates its moralizing, oppressive influence and rancid style into life at large. 

In the case of art, the Church goes to extreme lengths to impose and control popular taste, to the inevitable disgust of a new generation of artists—a stellar and representative group of which is represented in this exhibition—who dare to employ Orthodox imagery and symbolism to undermine the established religious canon and the dystopia it fosters in harness with state power. 

To such artists, the Church is but a hollow vessel that sustains itself only with elaborate stage sets and costumes, outdated ritual, and severe moralizing. However, it is their contention that while the regurgitated apparatus of the official Church represents a moribund ideology, it serves also as a foil by which art can transcend tradition and discover the new-within-the-old. 

This subterfuge is depicted vividly, and in fact compassionately, in this exhibition, in which, through installation, performance, video, and graphic art, the conservative and radical poles of post-Soviet society are shown to in fact interact. As one allegedly spiritual force engages in tearing the world apart while pretending to mend it, another, more pragmatic, biological force appeals to the need to rebuild society out of the ruins of Orthodoxy, thus recycling religion, rather than eradicating it entirely. 

Marat Guelman / Juan Puntes. 

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Press

Bedford and Bowery, Member of Pussy Riot Returns to Her Roots in Recycling Religion, by Nicole Disser
Artnet News, Pussy Riot’s, Maria Alyokhina on Her Plans for a Women’s Museum, by Cait Munro

Press contact : press@whiteboxny.org

Recycling Religion  is supported in part by Dukley European Art Community, Martin C. Liu and WhiteBox board members

The programs of WhiteBox are made possible in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council for the Arts. Special thanks to Postmasters Gallery, Richard Taittinger Gallery, and Magnan Metz Gallery. Special thanks to media sponsor artnet.