Breaking Frames: Twenty-Five Years of Independent Art in and from Russia

Breaking Frames: Twenty-Five Years of Independent Art in and from Russia is the first English-language survey of independent contemporary Russian art. What does it mean to create freely when artistic freedom is under threat? Featuring more than 100 full-color images, Breaking Frames brings the artists’ work vividly into view, making it an integral part of its story of artistic freedom, cultural identity, and creative resistance. It tells the dramatic stories of freedom-seeking artists who emerged between 2000 and 2025. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian artists first sought to engage with the modern art traditions from which they had long been isolated. Over the following decades, they developed an independent and self-confident artistic language. Yet this flourishing scene was shattered by a new era of censorship and repression. Since 2022, many artists have been forced into exile, while others continue to create under increasingly hostile conditions. Organized around themes rather than chronology, Breaking Frames introduces Russia’s leading contemporary artists while tracing the rise, transformation, and uncertain future of the country’s independent art scene.