By Wladimir Sgibnev
In a gallery in Berlin I stumbled upon a map drawn by the Russian artist and illustrator Leonid Tishkov. This stunning map is brimming with corporeal metaphorics: Tishkov conceptualises Russia as a hermahrodite being — Europe is its the female part and Asia its male — and composes an amusing and thought-provoking story around it.
Sure, the radioactive dump on Novaya Zemlya archipelago explains why the Islands could be conceived of as Russia’s faeces. But who ever thought, Kamchatka was Russia’s penis, peeing the Kurile Islands on Japan?
Leonid Tishkov's (1997) Anatomy of Russia (Courtesy of Jiri Svestka Gallery Berlin)
My translation of the map’s labels might be difficult to follow, but since I cannot redraw the map from scratch with all the English-language labels and annotations, I invite the reader to try and have a look on the table below. The labels are arranged according to their location on the map:
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Anatomical map of Russia |
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map scale 1:1000 |
The northern ocean, left to right: Barents Sea Novaya Zemlya (Russia’s faeces) Kara Sea Cape Zhelaniya Laptev Sea Eastern Siberian Sea USA |
male genitals of Russia |
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countries on the left, from above: Northern neighbours Sweden Fins Chukhnya Latvia Lithuania Belorussia Poland Ukraine Moldavia Hungary Romania diverse Yugoslavians Caucasus |
Russia, European part, from above: Moscow (the breast, mamma) Ryazan Tula Kaluga Volga our mother Europe (the female part) Astrakhan |
Russia, Asian part, left to right: Ural — Russia’s gastrointestinal tract Omsk Asia (the male part) Novosibirsk Krasnoyarsk Baykal (the urethra) Amur our father Magadan |
Pacific Ocean, from above: Kamchatka peninsula Okhotsk Sea Sakhalin island Japan Vladivostok |
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Southern borders, left to right: Kaspian Lake (the womb of Russia) Azeris Kazakhstan Mongolia China |
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Left: Russia’s female genitals |
Centre: The great androgynous Russia: Asia is its male part Europe — its female one Moscow is there our foster mother Christ Saviour cathedral glows with its nipple hides its uterus in the black soil everyone calls Volga its mother yet father we call the Amur Russia hauled out and drooped Kamchaka with the Kurile Islands we pissed on Japan we crapped with Novaya Zemlya Russia Russia is only our dear mother our stepfather — the Ural is her bowel the gastrointestinal crooked Russian path the Baikal is the bladder yet the Kaspian lake is an unfathomable vagina producing oil protect it from the Musulman they have surrounded it from all sides they want to disgrace it we won’t let offend Russia our motherland our people the great time will come the vulcanic Kamchatka will rise will unite itself nay will insurge against America her Hollywood will unite themselves the Asian part and the European one the great androgynous Russia will copulate with itself Kamchatka will enter the Kaspian and will stand there forever Russia will not need anyone neither Germany nor America and even less Libya a long orgasm awaits Russia eternal peace and honour to the tricolour composed and drawn by L. A. Tishkov |
Right: 1 – external genitals of Russia, 2 – head of the penis, 3 – penis corpus, 4 – spermatic duct, 5 – prostatic gland, 6 – the river Amur, 7 – seminal vesicle, 8 – scrotum, 8 – testicle |
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