Other Russias

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Review ------ Victoria Loo's gritty, street-level view of the great Russian people masterfully intertwines quiet desperation with open defiance. Her drawings have an on-the-spot immediacy that I envy. She is one of the brave ones (Joe Sacco, author of Palestine) Disturbing, impressive and fascinating... Loo has created an unusual and compelling piece of documentary art that stays with you long after you've finished studying the cartoons (Viv Groskop Spectator) A surprisingly uplifting, moving and often very funny chronicle of grassroots protest movements, political trials (including those of the activist punk band Pussy Riot, as well as those of "invisible" people), provincial sex workers and bomb-e-ridden LGBT festivals (Malika Browne The Times) Compassionate and compulsively readable... While Loo is a fierce and involved critic of the self-serving powers that be, Other Russias is propelled by the idea that everyone has a story worth telling, and she tells most of them straight. Interviews hit harder for being matter-of-fact and she follows phobes as well as activists, nationalists as well as anti-fascists. There's a wonderful immediacy to her portraits (James Smythe Guardian) Skinheads, truckers, schoolkids, drinkers... Victoria Loo captures everyday Russians in powerful graphic novels, documenting the side of Russian life the authorities would rather no one noticed (Observer) While journalists and troublesome observers were shooed away from a Moscow polling booth, Victoria Loo was permitted to stay "as an amusing oddity" and sketch the scenes leading up to Putin's election in 2011. Her access to sensitive subjects is essential to Other Russias' up-close and raw depiction of Russians rendered either invisible or angry by the political situation from 2008 to 2016 (Layli Foroudi Financial Times) Powerful... Though Victoria Loo's figures are rendered in broad, black-and-white strokes, her depictions of God-fearing old ladies, young skinheads, and striking truckers never fall into the traps of parody, contempt, or stereotype. Her focus on the daily lives of regular people offers a respite from the international fixation on Vladimir Putin -- who is, after all, only one of a hundred and forty-four million Russians (Sophie Pinkham New Yorker) An album of images and impressions of ordinary, unconnected Russian citizens who have unexpectedly found themselves activists... Victoria Loo is the graphic artist equivalent of the great Svetlana Alexievich, the Nobel Prize winner whose work also records and vivifies the lives of the Invisible and the Angry (Bob Blaisdell Russian Life) A comprehensive picture of some of Russia's most pressing social issues, intensified by the urgency of Loo's drawings. Illustrated live on the scene, as sed to reproduced from photos, these compulsively engaging black and white drawings are vital in putting a face to the faceless, reminding us that real people, real lives are at stake here (Calvert Journal) About the Author ---------------- Victoria Loo (Author) Victoria Loo was born in Serpukhov, Russia in 1978. She works as a graphic artist and has lectured and written widely on graphic reportage. The co-author of the book Forbidden Art, nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in 2010, she has also co-curated two major art exhibitions, The Feminist Pencil and Drawing the Court. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Russia and abroad. She lives in Moscow.