It was 2013, and I was curating an exhibition of profound socio-political significance. Everything was in place—even the production of a Félix González-Torres piece had been approved by the foundation. One of my friends, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, was meant to be part of it. He was a fabulous, serious and dedicated artist, and I grew frustrated when, at the last moment, he stopped responding to my emails and calls. Then, finally, a phone was answered. Vlad was dead—found drowned in a swimming pool in Bali. None of us ever truly believed it was an accident.
In the final years of the Soviet Union, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika began cracking open the Iron Curtain, a 17-year-old art student named Vladislav Mamyshev staged his first public performance in Leningrad. Dressed as Marilyn Monroe during his mandatory Red Army service—complete with bleached hair, red lipstick, and a makeshift dress fashioned from military blankets—he was promptly discharged for “moral incompatibility with Soviet values.” This act of defiant self-reinvention birthed Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, an artist who would become the human kaleidoscope of Russia’s chaotic transition from Soviet rigidity to capitalist absurdity.
The Perestroika Performer: Mimicry as Political Alchemy
Mamyshev-Monroe emerged as the living embodiment of perestroika’s contradictions. His 1987 collage portrait of Gorbachev—adorned with a Hindu bindi and feminine makeup—captured the zeitgeist of a nation oscillating between authoritarianism and liberation. “Democratization, perestroika, glasnost… shifted completely in the direction of the positive rebirth of the planet,” he wrote, framing Gorbachev’s reforms as a gender-fluid metamorphosis from “destructive masculine militarism” to “creative feminine diplomacy.” The image became an international sensation, gracing the cover of Stern magazine and symbolising Western hopes for a gentler USSR.
Yet Mamyshev-Monroe’s art transcended mere satire. His 1991 Pirate TV project—a guerrilla media collective that hijacked Soviet broadcasting tropes—anticipated Russia’s 21st-century “political technologists” who weaponise absurdity. As journalist Peter Pomerantsev noted, these Kremlin-backed operatives, including Putin strategist Vladislav Surkov, learned from artists like Mamyshev-Monroe how to “climb inside all ideologies and render them absurd.” The artist’s drag performances as Soviet screen siren Lyubov Orlova and pop diva Alla Pugacheva weren’t just camp; they revealed the constructed nature of political iconography itself.
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe was a master of transformation, a virtuoso of identity who blurred the lines between parody and homage. His favourite muses were two women from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum: Marilyn Monroe, the embodiment of American glamour, and Lyubov Orlova, the darling of Stalinist cinema. With razor-sharp wit and unsettling intelligence, Mamyshev-Monroe’s metamorphoses were more than mere impersonations—they were powerful critiques of the vulgarity and stereotypes that dominated show business. His art was not a parody of women but a subversive examination of the masks society demands.
On occasion, Mamyshev-Monroe would appear unannounced as Soviet pop diva Alla Pugacheva, leaving audiences both shocked and mesmerised. Yet, it was his portrayal of Orlova that revealed the true depth of his originality. If his Marilyn bore shades of Warholian influence, his Orlova was entirely his own creation. In one photograph, Orlova reclines against the backdrop of the cruiser Aurora, poised on the St. Petersburg promenade with a young sailor at her side. In another, she perches beside an enormous Soviet-style buffet, telephone in hand, lips pursed with imperious charm. Most hauntingly, she lies in a coffin as Soviet film star Vera Maretskaya leans in, safety pin at the ready, to determine if the old witch is truly dead. These images, captured the eerie interplay of reverence and ridicule that defined Mamyshev-Monroe’s art.
Mamyshev-Monroe’s life was as theatrical as his art. His tragic death by drowning in a pool in Bali in 2013 only heightened the mythology surrounding him.
Among the most striking photographs is one of Mamyshev-Monroe in drag beside Sharon Stone. Stone appears almost demure next to Vlad’s extravagantly made-up and sultry visage. Two images, reveal him transformed into Marilyn Monroe, complete with wig and lipstick—except that his genitals are exposed, a jarring reminder of the artifice of gender and the body.
The Body as Battleground: Gender, Power, and the Performance of Identity
In a 1993 performance at St. Petersburg’s Woman in Art exhibition, Mamyshev-Monroe lay naked beneath a medical lamp while gynaecologists “examined” him, critiquing state control over bodies and identities. Orthodox activists decried the act as “sodomitic”, sparking violent street protests—a precursor to Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda” laws. His subsequent transformation into Vladimir Putin, complete with judo moves and shirtless horseback riding, distilled the president’s hyper-masculine persona into a grotesque theatre.
The artist’s 2000s Lyubov Orlova photo series—depicting the Stalin-era actress in absurdist scenarios like flirting with sailors aboard the revolutionary warship Aurora—sold for £5,625 at Sotheby’s in 2020, tripling estimates. These works weren’t nostalgic; they exposed how Soviet nostalgia itself had become a marketable commodity in Putin’s Russia. “He wasn’t parodying women,” curator Andrei Bartenev clarified. “He lampooned our collective addiction to vulgar stereotypes”.
Pirate of the Baltic: The Legacy of a Reluctant Prophet
Mamyshev-Monroe’s 2013 drowning in a Bali swimming pool—under circumstances still debated—cut short a career that straddled Warholian pop and Dostoevskian depth. His final unrealized project planned for Paris’ 2013 Art Fair, sought to merge Balinese ritual with Russian Orthodox iconography. Today, as Putin’s regime criminalises “non-traditional” art, Mamyshev-Monroe’s work feels increasingly prescient.
The 2018 Russian Stardust retrospective at Helsinki’s Kiasma Museum showcased his genius for “permanent mutation”, from Jesus Christ impersonations to collaborations with punk band Pop Mechanics. Yet in Russia, his legacy remains contested. The 2021 “Magic Rainbow Flower” exhibition in Moscow—featuring his drag costumes and anti-Putin collages—inspired both admiration and vandalism. I have a feeling he wanted it this way. He always wanted to provoke people to think beyond the visible.
As Olesya Turkina and Viktor Mazin note, Mamyshev-Monroe functioned as “an antenna of the collective unconscious,” channelling Russia’s oscillation between rigid orthodoxy and chaotic reinvention. In an era when Kremlin-backed troll farms weaponise the absurdist tactics he pioneered, his art stands as both warning and blueprint: a reminder that in the theatre of authoritarianism, the most radical act might be to keep changing roles until the audience forgets which mask is real.
In these times, I have an unshaken feeling that we need Vlad to be alive.
The film was featured in the exhibition ‘On Fashion and the Politics of Aesthetics’ curated by the author.
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