Despair of Pleasing — Julia Shuvchinskaya

“Someone said praying isn’t really talking to God.
It’s acknowledging despair.
To throw yourself on the ground because that’s all you can do.”

— Sentimental Value (2025), dir. Joachim Trier, screenplay by Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt

The Performance

At dawn on 25 August, artist Julia Shuvchinskaya will enter Lisbon’s Chiado Square and begin a ritual of impossible pleasing.

“The Portuguese Empire was so hungry for other people’s territory that it helped write the first rules of colonisation. And now, when I am trying to live and work here, I can’t do it freely.
So I bring you the earth. Since you love land so much.”

Across the pavement of the square, the artist has identified 186 forms that she reads as unmistakably phallic. During the performance, sheets of paper will be placed over these forms and Portuguese earth will be rubbed across them, producing a series of individual imprints.

She will work alone, dressed in white, and without speaking to the public. She may crawl, cry, laugh, meditate, or remain completely still. The task is simple: to stay focused and complete the ritual, one form at a time.

Pencil drawing of a standing figure whose head is a thatched hut, holding a book titled Portugal Colonial. — Carlos Bunga (1976).

“Dum Diversas, 1452. Terms and conditions are outdated.”

Why Chiado?

Chiado is the historic centre of Lisbon, associated with culture, commerce, money and power in the capital of Portugal. The phallic forms in its pavement led the artist to imagine the square as part of the symbolic anatomy of the country: if Portugal were a body, Chiado would be an intimate centre of power, and the forms in the pavement its phalluses.

Aerial view of Chiado Square annotated by hand in colour, counting the phallic forms section by section across the pavement. — Chiado Square, working map — 186 forms, counted section by section.

“In our patriarchal society, the God of Portugal’s Bureaucratic System can only be a giant male creature with 186 penises — one for every territory once kissed by the Portuguese Empire.”

On August 25, 1988, a major fire began in Chiado and destroyed 18 buildings before being brought under control around 4 pm that afternoon.

For Shuvchinskaya, fire is also a metaphor for the anger and helplessness she carries into the performance. The ritual begins near dawn — the hour at which the historic fire once began — and moves towards cleansing, rebirth, expansion.

The Ritual

There is no established ritual for dealing with immigration bureaucracy, so the artist has created one.

Her research into territories historically connected with the Portuguese Empire brought her into contact with different traditions involving phallic symbols, fertility, prosperity, offerings and ritual gestures intended to attract the attention or favour of higher forces. These references, alongside the specific forms found in Chiado, became part of the conceptual foundation of this lingam ceremony, named Despair of Pleasing.

The paper is equally connected to the work’s subject. After years of forms, applications, proofs and documents, the artist creates her own paperwork. The earth of Portugal becomes the witness to her attempts to please and satisfy, while the prints become records of the action. The material also carries a historical tension: a country whose history is deeply connected to the acquisition and control of territory is asked, through this gesture, to witness the attempt of one person to live and work on that territory.

High-contrast drawing of the original oval pavement around the monument to the poet Ribeiro Chiado, its repeating forms fanning out from a central rectangle. — The primitive pavement around the monument to the poet Ribeiro Chiado.

“You want more papers? I will give you more papers!”

Body and Shame

This performance involves deliberate exposure. The artist places her body in the middle of a public square and allows herself to perform movements that may appear strange, awkward or ridiculous. This is part of her work with shame: the fear of being seen, judged, laughed at.

Rather than presenting anger as spectacle, the performance uses meditative repetition and concentration to stay in the present moment. The action becomes a way of experiencing despair physically and of pushing beyond the limits of familiar behaviour and comfort.

Fisheye photograph of the monument to the poet Chiado standing on its patterned mosaic pavement. — Mosaic around the monument to the poet Chiado, in the square of the same name, constructed 1886.

A Date with Portugal

“Deal with problems with Love, they say.”

The performance is an attempt to attract attention to a bigger problem. Its surreal quality comes from the action itself: a person trying to resolve a bureaucratic impasse by performing a ritual over the phallic forms of a city pavement. The resulting earth prints will form a body of work, accompanied by photographic and video documentation of the performance.

Personal Context

Julia Shuvchinskaya is an award-winning artist and filmmaker with over 20 years of experience across film, visual arts, theatre, and performance. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other international venues.

The performance comes from the artist’s experience of trying to establish a life in Portugal after leaving Russia in 2022, following the beginning of the war. She has worked as a self-employed artist, paid taxes and continued to contribute to cultural projects, while her residency and other administrative matters have remained unresolved. Requirements have changed or contradicted one another, documents have gone missing, and banking and other basic administrative processes, like the right to leave the country, have become additional obstacles.

“For the past four years I have been in a very toxic relationship. Nothing that I do ever satisfies my partner. I am never good enough and I am so fucking tired of trying prove that I am worthy of love. My relationship is with Portugal.”

The performance is therefore not a literal protest against one institution. It is a way of giving form to the point at which continued attempts to satisfy a system begin to produce despair. The artist has chosen a ritual because, in moments when ordinary action no longer seems sufficient, people across cultures turn to ritual: they pray, make offerings, repeat gestures and appeal to forces they believe may intervene.

I am only one small Russian woman among hundreds of thousands of people facing the same absurdity.
May this ritual be for all of us.

“I don’t know who I prayed to, but I said it out loud.
‘Help me. I can’t do this. I can’t do it alone.
I want a home.’”

— Sentimental Value (2025)