Chuvash Artist Struggles Against ‘Museumified’ National Culture Moscow Seeks to Impose on Her People and Other Nations in the Empire

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – Aysha Demina, 25, a Chuvash artist who has been forced into emigration, says that in her work, she seeks to help people struggle against the “museumified” national cultures that Moscow seeks to impose on her Christian Turkic Middle Volga people and on other nations of the Russian empire as well.

            In advance of the appearance of her work in Amsterdam later this month, she spoke with Leyla Latypova of The Moscow Times about how she believes her work can help the Chuvash and others overcome the cultural taboos that the Russian authorities have imposed and the traumas non-Russians have suffered (themoscowtimes.com/2025/08/04/chuvash-artist-aysha-demina-weaves-away-cultural-taboos-and-generational-trauma-a90065).

            For the Amsterdam exhibit involving Artists Against the Kremlin, Demina has prepared three large tapestries which retell an old Chuvash myth about how the world once had three suns but lost two of them because of the miscalculations of the people, a story that she argues has much to tell people now.

            Her “three tapestries,” she continues, “each show a different arrow: one pierces the heart, one pierces a word, and yet another a heart. “Together, they are a reminder that “these very arrows should be turned inward into our consciousness to clear it of unnecessary meanings and obsolete paradigms.”

            (For a profound discussion of the meaning of multiple suns among northern peoples, see the brilliant new translation of Lennart Meri’s classic Estonian history, Silverwhite: The Journey to the Fallen Sun, London, 2025.)

            According to Demina, “cultural repression [in Russia] has taken many forms and affected millions of people whose ancestors now live with the inherited trauma of fear and shame. It could be humiliation – being bullied for being ‘different,’ being treated with prejudice or being made to feel lesser just for being of another ethnicity.”

            Under Putin, she says, “the Russian authorities continue to repress indigenous people through legal mechanisms, labeling those who speak about cultural diversity and native languages as foreign agents, extremists and terrorists,” all to promote colonization: to erase distinctions within the country and then erase Russia’s foreign borders as well.

“Because Indigenous cultures were appropriated and ‘museumified’ by outsiders,” Demina continues, “even the cultural carriers themselves have developed a kind of taboo around claiming their heritage. There are these 'correct' examples of cultural expression shown in museums or textbooks, and people feel that only they are legitimate.”

“But culture lives when it’s in people’s hands, when new things are created, when new masters and artists emerge, when old patterns and symbols are given new contexts,” she argues; and so “decolonizing knowledge … is about removing the taboo around engaging with your own culture and also letting go of the shame or fear that you might have done something ‘wrong.’”