Mogutin is a New York-based Russian-American multimedia artist and author exiled from Russia for his outspoken writing and activism. Informed by his bicultural dissident and refugee experience, Mogutin’s work examines the notions of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, love and hate.

Born Yaroslav Yurievich Mogutin (Ярослав Юрьевич Могутин) in the industrial city of Kemerovo, Siberia, he left his family and moved to Moscow at age 14. A third-generation writer and self-taught journalist, he soon began working as a reporter and editor for the first independent Russian newspapers, publishers, and radio stations, such as Echo of Moscow, The Moscow Times, The Moscow Guardian, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Stolitsa, and Novy Vzglyad. He was hailed as one of the foremost voices of the post-Perestroika new journalism and the only openly gay personality in the Russian media.

By the age of 21, Mogutin had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation and became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to seven years. He was charged with “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms,” “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence,” “inflaming social, national, and religious division,” “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions.”

In 1994, Mogutin attempted to register officially the first same-sex marriage in Russia with his then-partner, American artist Robert Filippini. The attempt made headlines around the world, but only further fueled his persecution by the authorities. Forced to flee his country in 1995, Mogutin became the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the US on the grounds of homophobic persecution. His case for asylum was supported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, Committee to Protect Journalists, and PEN American Center, setting the precedent for many other gay and lesbian refugees from the former USSR.

 

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I interviewed Mogutin in The Advocate magazine in 2013 about the gay boycott of the Sochi Olympics in Russia. The artist had asylum in the United States and he called the Winter Olympics Putin’s “pet project and propaganda vehicle.”

 

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