Slava Mogutin: Exiled Russian Queer Artist Decries US Censorship

Russian “queer artist” Slava Mogutin, who now lives in New York, lives in exile from his home country in part to escape censorship of his art—but in a new interview with Out Magazine, Mogutin says that especially after the ban on porn institute by the social media platform Tumblr, the United States has become as bad as Russia when it comes to censorship of sexual self-expression.

"I posted a lot of content on Tumblr that was previously censored on Facebook and Instagram. Before Tumblr, I had a blog named Pinko Commie Fag Blog on Blogspot, where I was featuring the work of emerging queer artists. I left Blogspot because of censorship, and now Tumblr is the latest casualty of this corporate takeover of social media,” Mogutin told Out. “I was exiled from Russia for my queer activism and journalism, but I’ve been censored in America just as much as in my native country. “

According to his own online biography,  Mogutin—who as a young journalist says he was “the only openly gay personality in the Russian media”—was the subject of two criminal cases in which he faced such charges as “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions.” In 1994 he attempted to register Russia’s first same-sex marriage, and the following year he was forced to leave Russia and became “the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the U.S. on the grounds of homophobic persecution.”

With Tumblr now closed to adult content, Mogutin has now collaborated with the Tom of Finland store on a new exhibition titled XXX Files that, not by coincidence, opened on December 18—the day after Tumblr put its new porn ban into effect.

“For over 10 years, Tumblr was the most liberal platform that was largely free of censorship and it became the main destination for the fetish and queer community that was marginalized and banned on other social media platforms. Most of my artist friends are, or were, on Tumblr not just for sharing their own work, but also for using it as an aspiration material, a sort of visual mood board," Mogutin told Out. "When the news broke about Tumblr imposing this new policy, Tom of Finland store invited me to create this online exhibition as a way of protest and defiance against censorship, but also as a way creating a welcoming, safe-haven platform for other queer artists."

Images from Mogutin’s XXX Files exhibit, which runs through June 18 of next year, can be seen at the Tom of Finland store site.

Photo of Slava Mogutin By SHARE Conference / Wikimedia Commons