Paternalism

• This is because Russian history has swung back and forth between chaos and autocracy, which have become mutually reinforcing symptoms of the same historical condition.
• Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has come to symbolise a new cycle of this history taking place in Russia today.
• Whether or not Prigozhin may have exposed Putin’s vulnerabilities, history suggests that what is to come could well be worse.
• By referencing the smuta Putin was reminding Russians of the profound dangers of dissent – and of his mandate to suppress it.

The gathering of the lands

• The campaign, begun under his predecessor Ivan III (“Ivan the Great”), is known as the “Gathering of the Lands”.
• Ever since, Russian leaders have perpetuated the idea that Russia must dominate its peripheral lands as a defensive act of national survival.
• The terror he wrought on his people, economy and lands through years of war and repression sowed the seeds for the smuta to come.

Boris Godunov

• Boris Godunov was inspired by a period of crisis that forms the bedrock of Russia’s national mythology.
• Pushkin’s play tells the story of Boris Godunov, a Russian nobleman who came to power at the end of the 16th century during the “Time of Troubles”, the first period of smuta – a succession crisis that began in 1598 with the death of Tsar Fyodor I, the last of Russia’s founding Rurikid dynasty.
• When Fyodor died childless with no appointed heir, his brother-in-law Boris seized the throne, becoming Russia’s first non-Rurikid Tsar.
• Pushkin’s play ends as Boris, haggard in the face of increasing dissent, dies as a result of foul play.

Smuta

• Otrepyev was crowned Tsar Dmitry I, but his reign lasted less than a year.
• Over the following eight years a brutal struggle for sovereignty took hold.
• The smuta thus ended with the founding of a new autocratic bloodline that would rule and expand the Russian Empire for the next 300 years.
• It has been used to justify the absolutism and revanchism of Russian leaders from Tsars through to Soviet Commissars and modern-day politicians.

Divine right

• Russian Tsars were legitimised by the myth of divine right, meaning their power and authority as “Guardian of Holy Russia” was derived from God, rather than the Russian people.
• The General Secretary of the Communist Party was vested by the laws of History to lead Russians and their Soviet comrades along the true path to their glorious future.
• Putin has made it his spiritual mission to shield the Russia from the chaos of democratic and liberal freedoms.
• Read more:
  'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech

The roots of Russian silence

• All he asked for in return was “unity”, which in Russian is a byword for passivity and acquiescence.
• The passivity of the Russian people often baffles the Western world, particularly in response to the war in Ukraine, which is being waged in their name.
• Pushkin describes the narod – the Russian people – as “obedient to the suggestion of the moment, deaf and indifferent to the actual truth, a beast that feeds upon fables”.
• The truth is that the Russian ruler’s prerogative as tsar-batiushka or “Father Tsar” can only hold sway over an acquiescent, even infantilised realm.
• An old question arises: will the Russian people remain silent?

• In April, The Australian published the results of a four-month investigation into white staff “interference” at Tjala Arts, a member of the APY Arts Centre Collective of Indigenous art centres across South Australia.
• One question it raises is what do art managers and studio assistants actually do in remote Indigenous community art centres?

50 years of arts centres

• Papunya Tula marked the transition from the paternalism of the mission era to Indigenous self-determination, supported by the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Board.
• Aboriginals have been given full responsibility for developing their own programs in the arts under a new Government policy to revitalise cultural activities through the Australian Council for the Arts.
• Today, this workforce are mostly young women with degrees in visual art or arts management.

A cross-cultural thing

• Rather, Aboriginal art is “a cross-cultural thing”, bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative workers together.
• Despite the shared goal and triumphs of the cultural industries in celebrating Indigenous art, the shadow of Australia’s colonisation is never far away.
• The conditions in remote art centres have evolved since the 1970s, but the practicalities are essentially the same.
• Read more:
  Aboriginal art: is it a white thing?

A collaborative space?

• Some aesthetic influence on the final product is only natural, but painting directly on the canvas is never part of the job description.
• The studios of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are extreme examples of art making being undertaken by studio assistants.
• So too, Aboriginal artists enjoy workshops with specialists in fields as varied as printmaking, bronze casting, animation or glassmaking.
• It’s up to the artists first, and the institutions, curators, the market and art critics next, to evaluate such collaborations and exchanges case by case.

Cultural narratives and daily realities

• This is where art centre staff document the artist’s painting with a photo and the related Tjukurrpa or Country.
• These “certificates of authenticity” documenting culturally important stories guarantee the works as genuine Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander works.
• It’s the disconnect between these purist cultural narratives and the realities of the busy cross-cultural studios that puts the artists, their staff and the entire industry in such a paradoxical position.