How the "Book" was created

Lizaveta Dauhulevich
'Book in Exile' author

«I started creating The 'Book in Exile' in March 2022. This was my university project: I told my teacher that I would like to devote time to create a physical tribute to all the activists of the BSA who were forced to leave Belarus for their thirst for freedom and justice.

Visits to museums and exhibitions have always inspired me, and the 'Book' was no exception. After returning home from the Venice Biennale, I had a lot of creative thoughts on how to rethink Belarusian student activism in the context of creativity.

First of all, I collected the stories of the activists, reread them and thought about how to make the stories unique, to reflect the personality of the characters. Thus, on each page you can see different styles of drawings and writing: the story is written in a first person narrative on one page, and in the third person on another.

After the presentation of "Book in Exile" at the ESU board meeting in Prague, representatives of European student associations were coming up to me and saying that they almost cried from the stories about how our activists miss their mother's pancakes. For us, Belarusians, it's quite a standard situation to miss something from home, but for foreigners it's an unusual emotion».

Coincided with the International Students' Day, presentations of "Book" were also held in Vilnius, Poznan and Oslo. The visitors together with the invited guests - student activists, heroes and heroines of "Book" - discussed the present and future of Belarusian student movement, challenges and opportunities abroad, and how to help and support the repressed academy.

The "Book" presentation