Inventing a Language of Love and Peace: Conversation with Sasha Skochilenko
Illustration by Sasha Skochilenko. Courtesy of the artist.
Sasha Skochilenko is a Russian musician, artist, and activist known for her LGBTQ+ advocacy, playful and often politically charged illustrations, and vocal opposition to Putin and the war in Ukraine. In April 2022, she was detained by Russian authorities for replacing price stickers in a grocery store with stickers conveying anti-war messages and charged with violating recently introduced wartime censorship laws. She faced up to seven years of imprisonment. Skochilenko was released on August 1, 2024, in an international prisoner exchange.
She is currently living in Berlin with her partner, Sonia Subbotina, who was denied permission to visit Skochilenko in prison, and remained in Saint Petersburg throughout Skochilenko’s detention, fighting for her release. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Skochilenko about her background, inspirations, current work, and future aspirations.
Emma Fiona Jones: It seems that as early as university, you were already aware of the emerging imperialist tendencies in contemporary Russian culture. Where did that political awareness and impulse to spark social change come from?
Sasha Skochilenko: I became aware of the political situation at the age of 19. Previously, I wasn’t involved in politics. I studied to be a film director and pursued my art. But around 2009, I fell in love with someone, who loved politics and was reading all day long about [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky. And I also fell into politics.
I started working as a video journalist in 2010. During the election, I worked as a journalist for a publication called Paper Paper. They built all this resonance around my case [when I was in prison]. But at that time, what was capturing me were huge protests and actions happening after the Parliamentary elections in 2011. All the young people who [previously] were not interested in politics came out and actually voted, and they didn’t vote for Putin. And when we found out the results, it resulted in protests. There weren’t as strict laws about gathering at that time [as there are now]. The worst thing that could happen would be to spend a day, maybe two, at the police station. And I was filming all along—these young people out in the streets, chanting and giving speeches. It was about people, not politics.
In 2012, there was the biggest oppositional rally [since the 1990s], in Bolotnaya Square. There was a huge [attack] on protesters who were protesting in peace. Their action was organized; it was not forbidden to do this march. But for some reason the cops began to beat people and spray tear gas. They were in helmets and military uniforms. It was a nightmare. It was like we were in a fog. There were bottles flying past my head. The police were just beating people. I nearly died. I was wrapped in this banner and could hardly breathe, but I managed to get out and survived.
We were also going to LGBTQ+ protests. Homophobic laws had just been passed in Saint Petersburg, and then [in 2013, the legislation] went into effect for the whole country. But we were the first protesters against these homophobic measures that were about to begin.
By 2017, I was really discouraged by what was going on. We felt like we’d done everything we could. We went to elections, we uncovered falsifications and proved that they were happening, but not every court was satisfied with this. That’s why none of our candidates ever passed even the lowest bar of Municipal Deputy. We discovered for ourselves [how elections laws] worked, we [figured out] how to act in court—and over the years, my relationship with the police was growing sharper.
Illustration by Sasha Skochilenko. Courtesy of the artist.
My first arrest was at the age of 14. I was playing the guitar on the streets. I got arrested because you weren’t allowed to play on the streets for money. But that time, they just sent me away and told me to go to hell. Then my second clash with the police was at the age of 19. I was in love, and the person I was in love with broke up with me. I drew and printed out what looked like advertisements with our portraits and wrote “please forgive me.” This was a huge romantic gesture for me at the age of 19. I hung them everywhere near this person’s home. I was hanging up the last one when a policeman came up to me and asked what political organization I was working with. I told him it wasn’t for a political organization, it was for the person I was in love with. He brought me to the police station, and I was there for a few hours before they realized that it wasn’t political.
EFJ: At the same time that you’ve been politically active, you’ve also been playing music. What is it that music allows you to express that politics and visual art do not?
SS: Music is my soul. It’s different. It’s a spiritual experience. I’m not religious, but my god is music. When I was in prison, a physicist [who worked on a particle] collider wrote to me and told me about string theory. He told me that in some simple way, this theory explains that our world is music, that everything is built from tiny vibrations of these strings that we can’t see or understand yet. Music is not only something that you feel; it’s not only subjective—it’s something that exists objectively. And when I’m playing with a person, I feel that we are touching each other with these sound waves. Because it’s physics. So whenever I come home, no matter what mood I’m in, I play about my day, about my thoughts. I believe that every person on earth can play music. Because music is ancient. It’s older than musical school. We have musical theory that can describe the musical world, but we also can feel, play, and understand it without all of that.
But while everyone can play, not everyone can be heard. Sometimes we’re not ready to hear someone. For example, women are discriminated against in music. I experienced this all my life. I’ve been improvising from the age of four. Sometimes I improvise with musicians—who are mainly men, especially in electronic music—and they’re just not ready to hear a woman playing. They play so loudly that it drowns out everything else.
That’s why, back in Saint Petersburg, I organized my own group, “Free and Occasional Jam.” I built this space for people who couldn’t get to this elite men’s club. It was mainly for women and people with mental health challenges because they are often not ready to open themselves to other people. I was building a safe space for all the people who are outcasts in this world. I would bring all of my instruments, sometimes taking several trips on my bike. Everyone could come. It was completely free because there were also people who could not afford instruments.
We were exercising our freedom. It was an atmosphere of unconditional love. We had no conductor, no one telling us what key or rhythm we should play [in]. There are so many talented musicians who don’t know harmony, who don’t know how it “should” sound. And every time we played, really great music would start to emerge, clear and harmonic—and this is madness, no? This is why I started to believe in anarchy. Because they were doing what they wanted. If a musician wanted to stay in the key in her head, she would go ahead. Every time, it was a celebration of music.
In prison, I read Patti Smith’s autobiography, Just Kids. She wrote that she met Jimi Hendrix several months before his death, and he said he had this idea to invite musicians from all around the world to play different notes, whatever they want. And together they would invent this language of love and peace.
EFJ: So you carried on his legacy without even knowing it!
SS: [laughs] Yes!
Illustration by Sasha Skochilenko. Courtesy of the artist.
EFJ: Through all of this, your activism, journalism, and music, you’ve also been a working artist. Can you talk about your illustrations?
SS: I’m not involved in journalism or politics now. I believe that through my art I can do more. I’ve been doing illustrations ever since I published my comic book about depression, which went viral online. I published it to explain to my friends what was happening to me—why sometimes I look perfectly fine [when I’m not], the ways I had tried to heal, and so on. Many people loved this comic book, and psychiatrists and psychologists recommended it to their patients. I also republished it in Ukraine, which was one of the reasons I went there to protest.
Actually, I never called myself an artist, but at this time the media started to write about me, calling me “an artist from Saint Petersburg.” So I said, okay, if that’s what people see me as, that’s what I am. Publishing my depression book connected me with so many people and organizations in Russia. I then illustrated a book on bipolar disorder. This is a Russian book, because we don’t have much literature like this in Russia. It will become available next year.
Right now, I’m starting to work on illustrations for a[n] [Aldous] Huxley text. This is a text that was never published before, and never translated into Russian, so it’s a great honor to illustrate this book.
My personal plan is to make a comic book about my arrest and release. It would be a feat to be able to tell such difficult stories. Many people can’t hear about torture and blood and so on, but they can understand these stories in another form, because all the painful and tragic things are stronger when they are in a humoristic context. That’s why I want to, and should, do it: to tell the world, especially young people, who are expected to rule the world in 20 to 30 years, [what is happening]. I look to Maus and Persepolis as references.
Illustration by Sasha Skochilenko. Courtesy of the artist.
I’ve been working on this ever since I was in prison. The idea of this book came to me on my first day in jail. I was so mad at the people who captured me and were violent toward me that I decided, “When I get out of this prison, I’ll tell the world about all of you. I’ll remember your face and draw it ugly in my book.” I decided that it would be a huge comic book. It would be too difficult for me to do it in another way, and to translate and edit it. I’m saving to buy myself a computer so I can go back to digital illustration, but for now I’m doing it all by hand. Nowadays we have AI that can draw anything, but it can’t draw how artists draw in analog materials. [Drawing by hand is] more exclusive. This “naive” form is more real.
EFJ: While you were in prison, you couldn’t take photos, so one of the only ways you could record what was happening was by drawing. Did that alter your relationship with art? Did your style change?
SS: From childhood, I was always drawing, I don’t know why. [Now it] maybe [has] something to do with depersonalization. This is a symptom of PTSD, that you see yourself from a distance, like you’re seeing yourself in a comic book. You’re not seeing from your eyes, you’re watching your life unfold from above. Like, “This is Sasha, she's being led away in handcuffs.”
In prison, I had all the time in the world to draw. Many people discover themselves as artists in jail, which is so cool to me. There are so many artists in prison. My drawings became more detailed, more neat, more sophisticated. Near the end of my imprisonment, I had the ability to, for example, draw a field and draw every single blade of grass, every single flower. Because I gained patience, patience that only life in prison could give you.
Illustration by Sasha Skochilenko. Courtesy of the artist.
EFJ: What are your hopes for the future of Russia—in general, or activist and queer communities specifically?
SS: I don’t like it when people who aren’t politicians have a sophisticated opinion on political stuff.
EFJ: What can those of us outside of Russia do to support queer people and political dissidents in Russia?
SS: Many months ago, I could answer. But nowadays, every month, Russia is changing, and not in a positive sense. I can’t speak on behalf of people in Russia today after being out of Russia for more than six months. But one thing I know is that support from abroad is not safe for people in Russia because we have homophobic and xenophobic laws.
EFJ: I recently read that you and your girlfriend have plans to get married.
SS: [holds up her hand, a colorful band on her ring finger]
We don’t have a set plan right now because we’re just settling in [in Berlin], but we promised each other that we would [marry each other]. We’ve been together for seven years now, and we’ve been through a lot. It’s obvious. We are family. We are together.
Courtesy of the artist.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
