Moscow Exhibit Illustrates Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's Court Room Saga
In March 2010, a free exhibition opened in a Moscow hosting cartoon figures that illustrate the courtroom saga of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. The exhibit has been described as a political protest and aims to keep interest in his fate alive.
The exhibit, being held in a gutted perfume bottle factory, is curated by Anton Litvin and features the paintings of artist Alexander Kotlyarov. The walls are embellished with gargoyles and massive cartoon faces of witnesses, lawyers and defendants, words popping in balloons from their lips. As visitors enter the exhibition they are greeted by a voice commanding "Stand up!", invoking the opening moments of a trial: "The judge is coming."
Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Litvin said: "It became clear that this was not just an actual trial of actual people, but a history of contemporary Russia...On the one hand, they are real people deciding the fate of other real people. But the society around them is not the least bit interested."
Alexander Golts, a military analyst and deputy editor of online opposition newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal, has played a large role in organizing the exhibit. Golts hired Kotlyarov and began to run his cartoons weekly on Yezhednevny Zhurnal's website. Commenting on goals of the exhibit, Golts said: "We felt the main strategy of prosecutors is to make the trial as dull as possible so that the public loses all interest. So the idea is to keep people interested."