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I got exhibited with some of my furry art in Moscow
a year ago
General
For those who need a background:
In June 2023 I participated in an exhibition project which was arranged in my city by a curator from Moscow, it was her graduation project and the idea was to explore underground contemporary art of our city. That's how she found me and first started exhibiting my old pre-furry period surreal artworks (exhibition project consisted of 6 monthly exhibitions illustrating 20th century art movements through our city's underground art) but then she started interviewing participating artists including me and we got so close that I told her basically everything about my life which also meant answering her question why I'm not doing anything like this old art anymore, I told it honestly that I switched to 18+ furry art and found myself in it. I showed her a plenty of examples and to my own surprise she shared a sincere interest to it and said that loving fictional anthro animals so deeply is actually an interesting concept which almost goes hand to hand with pop-art in some way and it would be interesting to have something like this on a June double exhibition dedicated to surrealism and pop-art. The only condition is that she can't exhibit anything 18+, as much as she understands things like that, she is afraid that audience won't understand it so we have to do compromise. She suggested me a collaboration where she pays me for all art materials I need and I create whatever I want as long as it fits exhibition criteria. This is how I made my TV-shaped piece which is also the very first depiction of my first personal characters, I still haven't posted it on FA because I want better photos but you can see it on my Twitter anyway.
https://x.com/BRacoondog/status/167.....89353254617089
Half a year have passed and then the same curator contacted me and said she plans a retrospective exhibition which sums up the experience of the 2023 exhibition, only those artists who participated in a previous project are invited, including me, and this time it's gonna be even more serious, at least because it's arranged not in my small provincial city which barely had any audience for contemporary art but Moscow itself. And it's supposed to have more exhibits presented at the same time. Unlike other artists, I had nothing to chose from my works because, again, I'm a 18+ artist with nothing polite which fits the conditions, so I had to do another collaboration and create a piece especially for this project with all the material costs covered. Not the time spend on it though but at least it's better than nothing. I had an old idea which I planned to do along with the TV piece in 2023 but got time only for one work so now the time have finally come for this idea to become real. I worked hard and finished this work in April, it was posted on my Twitter but again not here because I prefer things to be perfect for Furaffinity because it's my gallery, not a life blog like Twitter so I need proper photos.
https://x.com/BRacoondog/status/178.....50439013765384
We also found my old shoe-trap tryptich I drew 3 years ago with fursonas of my pals Duster and Banditails and my own, thankfully it looks sfw enough to exhibit so she printed those as well.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767322/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767419/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767475/
As you can see, she really wanted to keep pushing this furry line with me. To tell you more, when I said there's a public page for Moscow Furry Meetings she thought it would be a good idea to invite furries to the exhibition opening through it. Even though it's just me with few artworks in a big mass of not furry related art it's still relevant and indeed, this page admins allowed me to make an invitation post there. Curator also plans to invite me to Moscow again at June 9 to arrange a lecture for me where I can tell people about myself more in detail, about my life way as an artist, how I switched to furry and what is furry fandom at all and everything like this and she wanted to see furries on it too. With only condition, she asked furries to not arrive at exhibition opening in fursuits because it will just look out of place but she doesn't mind if they come in fursuits for this lecture.
Another good thing is that she promised to buy train tickets for everyone who have no way to get to Moscow by themselves. It's not something I can afford myself that easily so it was a really good bonus.
The only thing is that this exhibition has two openings, at May 15th and May 16th, first one was supposed to be a more private one mainly for participating artists, organizators, curators and special guests while the second one is more public.
Today I finally returned back from this long-waited exhibition trip to Moscow, I spent 2 days there from May 15 to May 16 and it was very full of good impressions but also full of stress as well. I didn't sleep well for three nights because first sleep was very short and I woke up very early to get to the train station in time, second sleep in a hostel wasn't super comfortable and long as well and the same for the third sleep in a train on my way back. Also didn't eat anything except three buns with lots of juice in these two days in Moscow which I spent all on my feet, my back and my legs were just dying and falling apart, I'm still recovering from such an experience, it's very hard to just walk from one room to another. On May 15th I helped the exhibition team a lot in order to get in time and finish all the last details before the private opening at 19:00 and there was A LOT of work to do. I thought I'll have some time to recover during the next day before the main opening which is also at 19:00 but curator invited me and other artists to visit one big contemporary art gallery in the morning and it was surely an awesome experience but it meant more and more walking for me.
Sadly I didn't have much time in my disposal for the main opening because my back ticket was bought for 21:45 and the road to the train station could take a whole hour so I had to stay for only one hour and a half and then run away from the exhibition opening like Cinderella. Honestly, I don't think I missed much because from what I saw it feels like main opening was nearly identical to the private one. And most importantly, I was worrying that I won't have as much time as I'd like to have to talk with Moscow furries invited to this exhibition and, well, this wasn't a problem because not even a single furry came... Despite a well described invitation post in a Moscow furry meeting group, despite it gained 40 likes and 10 reposts, despite I proved it with two group admins who both promised to come, nobody came there to support me. It was very upsetting and disappointing for me to see my plan to meet first irl furries in my life to fail so miserably. I never had much faith in Russian furries to begin with, I thought such an event can be a chance to break the ice and change my mind a bit but now I have even less faith, so fuck Russian furries. I don't want to sound so toxic and don't want to spoil my future relationship with local furries which maybe still has some possible future, obviously good people exist everywhere, I'm just talking about the majority. I know some aspects about Russian Furry Fandom segment background and why I'm an ugly duckling for it as an artist, hence why I never did any big attempts to get in touch with Russian furries except when they write me by themselves (which happens very rarely) so I honestly didn't really believe that a 100% American Memphis style furry art can really drive much attention from those who're mainly into generic mainstream anthro. Russian and American furries have a lot in common but also a lot of differences as well. I'm talking only to folks from America and sometimes West Europe not for no reason. I'm not saying that somebody is bad and somebody is good, we're just different, too much different. Even though we're all furries we probably live in too much different worlds and have no interest in each other. That's the sad truth.
There's still a chance to make me feel better if at least somebody come to my lecture at June 9, as people are allowed to come in fursuits there and I'm hoping it can help to tempt some fursuiters but honestly the chances still feel slim for me.
As for the exhibition experience in general, it was very good. It's a pretty high level underground art exhibition with a lot of talented artists presented in a very good way and a lot of visitors came during these two openings. My own exposition impressed a lot of people even though it didn't have much to exhibit, it really stood out in a contrast to more grim and sad contemporary art which is much more typical for Russia, many people pointed it out, really loving the way my works fill them with joy and agreeing with my views I express through such work. I didn't have much time to tell about furry in detail because this event is not long enough to give each artist a lot of time to talk about their art but still I said at least something, let's hope I'll have the same large audience on June 9.
However, there's still a reason why I felt like I don't belong to this place, to this audience and why I don't want to repeat such exhibition experience again. This reason was already described in previous posts but I'll repeat it again. I'm a 18+ artist. Period. I don't want to introduce myself as an sfw one, don't want to be perceived as one, I did one exception and don't want to cultivate this image further. I don't like my corners to be cut, I don't like to hide my real self, I'm a honest open person and I don't like to lie and make up lies about myself, it's easier to tell people truth or just don't tell them anything at all. This is why I quit communicating with Russian art society. If people can't accept the truth and who I really am then it's their problem which shouldn't bother me. And it was very sad to look in eyes of people smiling at me and loving my art while keeping in mind that if I dare to show who I really am then most of them will change their thoughts about me to opposite and take back everything good they said about my art. It was also very scary to hear "Can you share your contacts where I can see more of your art?" but thankfully nobody asked me this question.
Even if our country has an audience for such art (after all, the curator got especially interested in me right after I showed her around 20 examples of my nsfw art), the laws are still against it, LGBT is officially banned, you know, so no public gay shit for me. All that stuff left me with this bitter feeling that I probably had enough of Russian art life and this is probably the last time when I take part in it. I quit it long time ago and realized that I don't need it as long as I have furries from around the world supporting me, this time I got poked by a kind enthusiastic person two times but this is really the last time I respond to such offers. I'm trying to focus on good sides, that I got all my art material costs covered, got expensive train tickets paid and visited Moscow for the first time in 15 years, got some positive emotions and also there's already a chance that maybe the prints of my old shoe-trap tryptich can be sold but still it doesn't worth to sacrifice my main art business to participate in more events like this on a more regular basis.
So, I'm happy that this is finally over now and I can focus on my regular plans again. I'm very sorry for leaving my patrons without content and making my commissioners waiting, thankfully there's still almost half a month ahead and hopefully I'll manage to draw more stuff during this time.
For those who want to see photos, you can see some in my Patreon post, this is the only post I made public there because I don't see anything exclusive here. I have very few for now but hopefully I'll get more later because people were taking A LOT of photos all the time.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-e.....tion-104439194
In June 2023 I participated in an exhibition project which was arranged in my city by a curator from Moscow, it was her graduation project and the idea was to explore underground contemporary art of our city. That's how she found me and first started exhibiting my old pre-furry period surreal artworks (exhibition project consisted of 6 monthly exhibitions illustrating 20th century art movements through our city's underground art) but then she started interviewing participating artists including me and we got so close that I told her basically everything about my life which also meant answering her question why I'm not doing anything like this old art anymore, I told it honestly that I switched to 18+ furry art and found myself in it. I showed her a plenty of examples and to my own surprise she shared a sincere interest to it and said that loving fictional anthro animals so deeply is actually an interesting concept which almost goes hand to hand with pop-art in some way and it would be interesting to have something like this on a June double exhibition dedicated to surrealism and pop-art. The only condition is that she can't exhibit anything 18+, as much as she understands things like that, she is afraid that audience won't understand it so we have to do compromise. She suggested me a collaboration where she pays me for all art materials I need and I create whatever I want as long as it fits exhibition criteria. This is how I made my TV-shaped piece which is also the very first depiction of my first personal characters, I still haven't posted it on FA because I want better photos but you can see it on my Twitter anyway.
https://x.com/BRacoondog/status/167.....89353254617089
Half a year have passed and then the same curator contacted me and said she plans a retrospective exhibition which sums up the experience of the 2023 exhibition, only those artists who participated in a previous project are invited, including me, and this time it's gonna be even more serious, at least because it's arranged not in my small provincial city which barely had any audience for contemporary art but Moscow itself. And it's supposed to have more exhibits presented at the same time. Unlike other artists, I had nothing to chose from my works because, again, I'm a 18+ artist with nothing polite which fits the conditions, so I had to do another collaboration and create a piece especially for this project with all the material costs covered. Not the time spend on it though but at least it's better than nothing. I had an old idea which I planned to do along with the TV piece in 2023 but got time only for one work so now the time have finally come for this idea to become real. I worked hard and finished this work in April, it was posted on my Twitter but again not here because I prefer things to be perfect for Furaffinity because it's my gallery, not a life blog like Twitter so I need proper photos.
https://x.com/BRacoondog/status/178.....50439013765384
We also found my old shoe-trap tryptich I drew 3 years ago with fursonas of my pals Duster and Banditails and my own, thankfully it looks sfw enough to exhibit so she printed those as well.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767322/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767419/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36767475/
As you can see, she really wanted to keep pushing this furry line with me. To tell you more, when I said there's a public page for Moscow Furry Meetings she thought it would be a good idea to invite furries to the exhibition opening through it. Even though it's just me with few artworks in a big mass of not furry related art it's still relevant and indeed, this page admins allowed me to make an invitation post there. Curator also plans to invite me to Moscow again at June 9 to arrange a lecture for me where I can tell people about myself more in detail, about my life way as an artist, how I switched to furry and what is furry fandom at all and everything like this and she wanted to see furries on it too. With only condition, she asked furries to not arrive at exhibition opening in fursuits because it will just look out of place but she doesn't mind if they come in fursuits for this lecture.
Another good thing is that she promised to buy train tickets for everyone who have no way to get to Moscow by themselves. It's not something I can afford myself that easily so it was a really good bonus.
The only thing is that this exhibition has two openings, at May 15th and May 16th, first one was supposed to be a more private one mainly for participating artists, organizators, curators and special guests while the second one is more public.
Today I finally returned back from this long-waited exhibition trip to Moscow, I spent 2 days there from May 15 to May 16 and it was very full of good impressions but also full of stress as well. I didn't sleep well for three nights because first sleep was very short and I woke up very early to get to the train station in time, second sleep in a hostel wasn't super comfortable and long as well and the same for the third sleep in a train on my way back. Also didn't eat anything except three buns with lots of juice in these two days in Moscow which I spent all on my feet, my back and my legs were just dying and falling apart, I'm still recovering from such an experience, it's very hard to just walk from one room to another. On May 15th I helped the exhibition team a lot in order to get in time and finish all the last details before the private opening at 19:00 and there was A LOT of work to do. I thought I'll have some time to recover during the next day before the main opening which is also at 19:00 but curator invited me and other artists to visit one big contemporary art gallery in the morning and it was surely an awesome experience but it meant more and more walking for me.
Sadly I didn't have much time in my disposal for the main opening because my back ticket was bought for 21:45 and the road to the train station could take a whole hour so I had to stay for only one hour and a half and then run away from the exhibition opening like Cinderella. Honestly, I don't think I missed much because from what I saw it feels like main opening was nearly identical to the private one. And most importantly, I was worrying that I won't have as much time as I'd like to have to talk with Moscow furries invited to this exhibition and, well, this wasn't a problem because not even a single furry came... Despite a well described invitation post in a Moscow furry meeting group, despite it gained 40 likes and 10 reposts, despite I proved it with two group admins who both promised to come, nobody came there to support me. It was very upsetting and disappointing for me to see my plan to meet first irl furries in my life to fail so miserably. I never had much faith in Russian furries to begin with, I thought such an event can be a chance to break the ice and change my mind a bit but now I have even less faith, so fuck Russian furries. I don't want to sound so toxic and don't want to spoil my future relationship with local furries which maybe still has some possible future, obviously good people exist everywhere, I'm just talking about the majority. I know some aspects about Russian Furry Fandom segment background and why I'm an ugly duckling for it as an artist, hence why I never did any big attempts to get in touch with Russian furries except when they write me by themselves (which happens very rarely) so I honestly didn't really believe that a 100% American Memphis style furry art can really drive much attention from those who're mainly into generic mainstream anthro. Russian and American furries have a lot in common but also a lot of differences as well. I'm talking only to folks from America and sometimes West Europe not for no reason. I'm not saying that somebody is bad and somebody is good, we're just different, too much different. Even though we're all furries we probably live in too much different worlds and have no interest in each other. That's the sad truth.
There's still a chance to make me feel better if at least somebody come to my lecture at June 9, as people are allowed to come in fursuits there and I'm hoping it can help to tempt some fursuiters but honestly the chances still feel slim for me.
As for the exhibition experience in general, it was very good. It's a pretty high level underground art exhibition with a lot of talented artists presented in a very good way and a lot of visitors came during these two openings. My own exposition impressed a lot of people even though it didn't have much to exhibit, it really stood out in a contrast to more grim and sad contemporary art which is much more typical for Russia, many people pointed it out, really loving the way my works fill them with joy and agreeing with my views I express through such work. I didn't have much time to tell about furry in detail because this event is not long enough to give each artist a lot of time to talk about their art but still I said at least something, let's hope I'll have the same large audience on June 9.
However, there's still a reason why I felt like I don't belong to this place, to this audience and why I don't want to repeat such exhibition experience again. This reason was already described in previous posts but I'll repeat it again. I'm a 18+ artist. Period. I don't want to introduce myself as an sfw one, don't want to be perceived as one, I did one exception and don't want to cultivate this image further. I don't like my corners to be cut, I don't like to hide my real self, I'm a honest open person and I don't like to lie and make up lies about myself, it's easier to tell people truth or just don't tell them anything at all. This is why I quit communicating with Russian art society. If people can't accept the truth and who I really am then it's their problem which shouldn't bother me. And it was very sad to look in eyes of people smiling at me and loving my art while keeping in mind that if I dare to show who I really am then most of them will change their thoughts about me to opposite and take back everything good they said about my art. It was also very scary to hear "Can you share your contacts where I can see more of your art?" but thankfully nobody asked me this question.
Even if our country has an audience for such art (after all, the curator got especially interested in me right after I showed her around 20 examples of my nsfw art), the laws are still against it, LGBT is officially banned, you know, so no public gay shit for me. All that stuff left me with this bitter feeling that I probably had enough of Russian art life and this is probably the last time when I take part in it. I quit it long time ago and realized that I don't need it as long as I have furries from around the world supporting me, this time I got poked by a kind enthusiastic person two times but this is really the last time I respond to such offers. I'm trying to focus on good sides, that I got all my art material costs covered, got expensive train tickets paid and visited Moscow for the first time in 15 years, got some positive emotions and also there's already a chance that maybe the prints of my old shoe-trap tryptich can be sold but still it doesn't worth to sacrifice my main art business to participate in more events like this on a more regular basis.
So, I'm happy that this is finally over now and I can focus on my regular plans again. I'm very sorry for leaving my patrons without content and making my commissioners waiting, thankfully there's still almost half a month ahead and hopefully I'll manage to draw more stuff during this time.
For those who want to see photos, you can see some in my Patreon post, this is the only post I made public there because I don't see anything exclusive here. I have very few for now but hopefully I'll get more later because people were taking A LOT of photos all the time.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-e.....tion-104439194
It's unfortunate that you couldn't adapt to a cleaner form of content, but it's more important to be true to yourself. I hope one day your government will allow you to exist without fear of persecution.
I wish you could move to California, renounce your citizenship and become a US citizen as you would thrive as a furry here much more and be what you enjoy doing best. Indeed you would need a VISA and find work to live off the paychecks but at least you would have freedom to draw and go to gay friendly groups, conventions and events here.
I feel bad for the furries there, and i wish they could one day do the same and move out of Russia for the sake of freedom and safety to be a furry and just keep away from the war.
I would have attended if it were here, wouldve worn my GalaxyCat outfit and its much more kinky than the fursuits.
Be safe, and i pray for the best for you and your future.
It's a dream for me to live in US or at least some other better country where I'll have more freedom to be myself. Not that I'm really struggling with it here, it's just about this problem of being unable to exhibit 18+ gay stuff in galleries. But also I'd like to have more like-minded people closer to me which seems to be problematic at where I live. It's not like I idolize America, it just so happens that most the best furry friends I have online are from USA and I'd be very glad to see you and all of them in person. I don't know how can I survive in other countries though. I feel myself like in paradise being able to make a living from nothing but my art and I'm afraid that if I find a job which is not related to furry porn it will suck off all my time and energy and I'll be unable to produce as much art as I do now. So it's a pick your poison situation, it's either being free to do whatever you want but while living in Russia plus no gay exhibitions or lose your art freedom and become a work slave but live in the other country where I'll have freedom to exhibit whatever I want but the question is WILL I have time to create something to exhibit in such conditions? I do nothing but draw draw and draw every single day, I dedicate all my time to it and still it's enough only to make around 5-6 artworks a month. If I get an actual job... I'll make even less than that and my art plans will go at a snail pace and maybe one day I'll just get mentally tired of it, that's what I'm afraid of. I have a friend who has bigger perspectives than I do with his job, he wants us to start living together and help me to get a better life somewhere abroad without making me to sacrifice my art for the sake of some routine job but these plans can take a lot of time to make them real.
What feels like a more real option is to contact some American galleries at least on distance. One US friend of mine reassured me a lot saying that there's galleries in Los Angeles and Provence Town which specialize on sexual art especially and it can be 18+ easily. From his words, if they really love the piece they can even pay for shipping so that's the light of hope for me.
Thank you for your sweet words of support and let's hope that maybe one day I'll get closer to you and other people I love <3
Надеюсь твоя выставка послужит хорошим примером.
Ну а если говорить за открытость к темам обожания красивых фигур, то тут можно понять строгие запреты некоторых стран, ибо в других странах идет прямо обратная крайность, мда... тяжело все это балансировать когда у обоих крышу сносит в разные стороны.