Most people don’t associate Russian protest art with mansions on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but Soviet-born real-estate-developer-turned-art-collector-turned-artist Janna Bullock found a fitting venue for her installation, “Allegories & Experiences,” in the bare space of a Beaux Arts house on East 82nd Street. Sparked by the massive demonstrations in Russia in late 2011, the exhibition — Bullock's response to the 12-year rule of Vladimir Putin — is timed to coincide with the country’s March 4 presidential elections.
"The latest developments are quite fascinating and I think as with any dictatorship, no matter how bulletproof it seems, it comes to an end," Bullock says, explaining the motivation behind the work. "And it is my responsibility – and the responsibility of anybody who has position, knowledge, expertise, and will – to make sure that people understand that dictatorship is not forever and they have to stand up for themselves and they have to speak."
The installation itself is inspired by artists she has worked with as an art patron, like Richard Prince and Ilya Kabakov. It consists of 24 large-scale images of public figures (all but one appropriated from the Internet) – including journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya; former Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev; and billionaire and New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov – strung along the walls. Each image is paired with background text, along with an allegorical “title,” in Russian and English, conceived by Bullock to represent the person in the photo. The images are reproduced with performations around the edges like a giant film strip to emphasize the fact that "all these images look like things we’ve seen before – the cult of one person, the enforcement of one party," she says.
The 44-year-old Bullock, who emigrated from Saint Petersburg to the United States in 1989, amassed a fortune as founder of the RIGroup, an international real estate investment firm that has made money on development both in New York — where in 2007 she purchased the hole in a building on East 62nd Street where an Upper East Side doctor blew himself up — and Russia, where she has developed shopping malls and luxury homes. Bullock was a one-time trustee of the Guggenheim museum, but took leave abruptly two years ago because of a bitter business dispute in Russia, which, according to the New York Times, involved her company being seized by a firm part-owned by Putin’s former judo coach.
"What I’m seeing now in these last 12 years of Russia under Putin is just a reproduction of an old movie that’s been playing over and over again," Bullock explains, bringing together her aesthetic and political interests. "That old movie was called Socialist Realism."
“Allegories & Experiences,” is on view at 14 East 82nd Street through May 1. The exhibition is open Wednesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-6p.m.