Yana Payusova

is your halo on too tight?, 2023-2024

I’ve always been an avid fan of old Soviet propaganda posters and often show them to my students as examples of beautifully executed, well-designed images—though severely lacking in subtlety. They always felt old-fashioned, even benign. The word “propaganda” itself seemed lackluster, a relic of the Soviet past.

That all changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. At first, the news seemed absurd: Russia fighting Nazis in Ukraine? Give us a break—what a ridiculous notion. Everyone was outraged. But within weeks, the public mood began to shift. To our disbelief and horror, we watched the propaganda machine spring into action, working seamlessly. Half the population remained outraged, while the other half began dutifully echoing Putin’s rhetoric: claiming Ukraine wasn’t a real country, spewing nationalistic nonsense, and comparing the war to WWII (though still not allowed to call it a war). Even resurrecting the language such as “the enemy of the people.”

 For the last three years, this divisive debate has continued, and we’re no closer to a consensus. The truth feels as real as a golden unicorn—beautiful, yet abstract. It seems we live in an era of post-truth. As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I’m no stranger to the absence of information and government censorship, where the official party line was handed down from ‘above,’ though rarely believed.

Now, the utopian dream of democratized information has birthed a dystopia. Information is abundant, but so confusing and contradictory that we have to wade through a sea of post-truths, deepfakes, and a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories just to arrive at our own version of objectivity. Once we do, we cling tightly to our perspective, feeling a sense of relief—perhaps even moral superiority. We decide that we’re right, and we favor those who share our viewpoint. Meanwhile, we dismiss the other side as ignorant and gullible, wishing they’d all take a one-way trip to Mars—and bring their sympathizers along.

This body of work is an attempt to make sense of our new reality. Is Your Halo On Too Tight? explores how propaganda and misinformation operate within our news cycle and society as a whole.

In Apparatus, I created a porcelain Rube Goldberg machine—an intentionally over-engineered contraption designed to perform a simple task in an unnecessarily complex way, in this case, spreading propaganda. The project incorporates various stages, each representing different methods of disseminating information, progressing incrementally one small step at a time.

In Newtonian mechanics, the principle of causality suggests a direct, one-to-one relationship between cause and effect. This means that each force has a predictable and calculable outcome. Similarly, in Apparatus, each component in the chain of events triggers the next, mimicking the often subtle and gradual ways in which propaganda spreads through society, one seemingly insignificant action leading to larger, cumulative effects.

In Decoy I, II, and III, the surfaces of the three duck decoys are covered with images from old Soviet propaganda posters. The red decoy features imagery promoting the friendship between the former Soviet republics of Russia and Ukraine. The white decoy highlights the dangers of religious fanaticism, while the blue decoy focuses on the perils of prioritizing money. Beneath the surface, hidden Big Brother hands flash various gestures, subtly subverting the official message of the sculptures and indicating that things aren't as they seem.

Finally, in Za Rodinu (For Motherland), I draw parallels between the old and new realities of information dissemination. One side listens at the walls, referencing the old Soviet saying, "even the walls have ears," while the other side reflects the modern reality of information being blasted through a megaphone.