Exhibition // Stig Stasig – Retrograd

In 1988-93, photographer Stig Stasig documented life in the Soviet Union during its dissolution. His portrait of a country undergoing total transformation should help us understand today’s aggressive Russia. Project description June 2022. On December 25, 2021, it was 30 years since the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist. The Soviet Union disappeared not only as a state and as a geopolitical reality. The living conditions of its inhabitants changed fundamentally, as did their self-understanding. . Between 1988 and 1993, he made numerous trips around both the Soviet heartlands and the periphery; to the west in the Baltic States and Ukraine, far to the north and east in Siberia, and to the south and southeast in Georgia, Armenia and the Caucasus. On these journeys, he encountered a world that was doubly alien, separating itself both from our own daily lives and from the ideas we in the West had about Soviet society. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have become topical again. Because if we are to understand Russia’s actions in the present, we must understand the culture and history behind it. A culture and history that is characterized by extremes and violence, and where democracy has existed at most in rudimentary form.

Opening hours

Everyday from 10:00 – 17:00/18:00