The article accompanying exhibition
Opening the Door? Belarusian Art Today, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 24 May – 21 August 2011

Not long ago something unusual happened to me: I spent an hour and a half in the central bookstore in Minsk in the section on books about Belarus. Usually, if you live in Belarus, you strenuously attempt to defend yourself from the activity of propaganda: you don't read state newspapers, you don't watch state television, you don't participate in state holidays, you don't listen to the president's speeches. We digest the news only if they have already been treated by professional journalists from the independent media. Propaganda in a pure concentrated form is very dangerous. You can be penetrated by it, like radiation, and be contaminated forever.