Victoria Lomasko. "The Last Soviet Artist." A book talk and a screening of Tree of Violence (2024 | 81 min), a documentary by Anna Moiseenko

Join us for a conversation with Victoria Lomasko, author of The Last Soviet Artist, and a screening of the documentary Tree of Violence, which features her work and career!

​"The Last Soviet Artist" is a collection of graphic reportages by Victoria Lomasko, published by N+1 (New York, 2025). The book was created during trips across the former Soviet republics. The first part describes society in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia and the North Caucasus: gender rights, grassroots initiatives, fragments of the Soviet heritage and new trends. The book’s second part focuses on the Belarusian Revolution of 2020-2021, and the last major protests in Russia on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: what happens to the lives of ordinary people in times of historical change. The third part was written already in exile. All three parts are united by the main subject: generational conflict in the post-Soviet space. The book won the 2022 Free Voice award from PEN Catalan and Prix Couilles au Cul pour le Courage Artistique, Festival de BD d’Angoulême.

"Tree of Violence" (2024 | 81 min), a documentary by Anna Moiseenko, portrays the internationally recognized graphic journalist Victoria (Vika) Lomasko as she exposes truths about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Her ambitious new work on the long reach of state-sponsored violence—from domestic violence to the crackdown on free speech—is timely. As Putin wages a war against Ukraine and brands dissidents as "traitors, to spit out like flies," Vika faces increasing safety threats and must decide if a future in Russia is possible.

Victoria Lomasko’s (b. 1978) practice of graphic reportage synthesizes image and text, taking the form of novels, journalism, comics, paintings and monumental murals. A renowned dissident voice in the highly censored environment of contemporary Russia, Lomasko’s seminal graphic novels, including Other Russias and Forbidden Art, have an honest style exposing the country’s inequalities and injustices whilst amplifying and defending the plight of Russia’s many voiceless and unseen communities. Travelling across Russia and the neighboring countries, often at great personal risk, her work embraces a magical realist sensibility as a method of processing subjective and visceral experiences.