RUSSIAN PRISON SERIES 2003-2005
Russian Prison Series was inspired by Payusova’s experience of studying and listening to personal stories of incarcerated teenagers (14-21 year-old boys) at Lebedeva and Kolpino prisons in St. Petersburg.
Many of them became the victims of the economic chaos that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union. The work plays with concepts of saintliness, sins, holiness, and martyrdom by drawing on symbolic elements of Russian Christian Orthodox culture. The painted photographs are poetic invitation into the subjects’ life, thoughts, pain and sufferings. Payusova notes that both prison and church cultures are structured by rigid hierarchies and employ secret languages known only to a privileged few. Payusova conflates the two visual systems. “To shock or to insult the viewer is not my intention. I want them to consider what is more important – an icon or: a human life”.
