Palinopsia from April 23rd to May 17th, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

What is a utopia? Can one act as a facade to hide a dystopia? In Varvara Tokareva’s three Utopia pieces, she questions these same sentiments about the state of the USSR during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alongside this inquiry, Tokareva also questions the authenticity of AI as a generative art form. Together, her work has viewers inquire about how we remember the nature of the USSR and how we currently perceive AI. 

 

Varvara Tokareva, Utopia II (Screen Print), 2024.

Per the historical record, it is possible to answer both of these subjects. Whether in the form of digital prints, screen prints, or videos generated using AI and archival sources, Tokareva’s Utopia pieces reflect how the Soviet Union wanted to portray itself as a strong, perfect, and militaristic state. In essence, a perfect utopia. However, when thinking more deeply about the time period, it’s possible to discern how Tokareva reveals the true dystopia of the USSR. In her prints and videos, dozens of gymnasts choreograph themselves into perfect pyramids or parade around an open field at the Summer Olympics in 1980. Behind these literal performances hides the horror of not just the dozens of proxy wars that the USSR and United States conducted during the Cold War, but also the government’s treatment of people within the Soviet Union. The unity that Tokareva showcases in her works as a recreation of the Soviet aesthetic contrasts sharply with the USSR’s abuse and manipulation of countries in the Eastern Bloc or “Comecon.”: a system that first appeared under Stalin’s “Cominform” and then under the Warsaw Pact, notwithstanding the military crackdown in East Germany through the Berlin Wall as part of the larger “Iron Curtain” that separated Western and Eastern Europe. 

Varvara Tokareva, Utopia I (Digital Prints), 2024.

The focus of Utopia, the Olympic Games in Soviet Moscow that took place in July 1980, is a marvellous example of the USSR’s desire to hide this dystopia. At this time, the USSR had been facing allegations of its athletes using testosterone to improve their performance in previous Games. On top of this, due to the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan months earlier, the United States and multiple other countries boycotted the Summer Olympics in 1980 and a large number of European countries that attended competed under the flag of the Olympic Games rather than their native flags. Thus, despite the Soviet perfectionism displayed in the generative models that Tokareva used to create Utopia I-III, the Olympics that year were full of strife and global disunity.

This absurdity and dystopia that would not come to an end until the election of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and his democratic reforms carry similar sentiments to our treatment of AI-generated art today. In the same way that we remember the USSR as full of conflict and superficiality, the general consensus surrounding generative art is the same. Art made by AI is commonly seen as hollow and quite literally artificial. In using this form of art to depict the Soviet Union, Tokareva brilliantly marries the art form and subject together to represent common views and memories of the Union and AI-generated art. 

Varvara Tokareva, Utopia III (Three-channel video on three monitors), 2023-2024.

As a medium, the AI-generated prints even function in the same way as the USSR does. From afar, the works look normal, but when getting a closer look viewers can see missing faces, extra body parts, and other minor imperfections created by the AI. With the USSR, the performances at the Olympic Games and propaganda spread about the success of the Communist party and Soviet Union during the Cold War hid how people in the Eastern Bloc and Russia were impoverished and struggling to eke out a living. 
Altogether, Utopia is a perfect example of the exhibition’s title, Palinopsia, which are visual symptoms in which there is an abnormal persistence or recurrence of an image in time. Though the USSR is gone today, the image of a utopia in Russia still persists. The ongoing war in Ukraine is a reminder of the persistence and recurrence of a dystopia being hidden behind puppet governments.