Soviet dissidents bypassed state censorship through art. This L.A. museum wants to show you how

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Set us as preferred Crayoned letters, scraps of fabric and cutouts of Neil Armstrong crowd the bright room as artists old and young construct collages using mementos from the Cold War’s space race, a decades-long competition between the United States and former Soviet Union to achieve technological superiority and flaunt nationalism.The intensive crafting is part of the twice-monthly “Samizdat Sundays” workshops at the Wende Museum in Culver City.Taught by L.A.-based artist and poet Kate Ingold, the workshops center on samizdat, a practice in which Soviet dissidents hand-typed literature, criticism and poetry to bypass state censorship.

Each week, Ingold opens the workshop with a new prompt related to speech suppression — an issue with renewed currency today.“[Samizdat] means working within the limitations of the material or the space that you have,” Ingold said.

“It was a way for people to make things outside of the institutional parameters that the Soviet Union was imposing on people, and distribute it themselves too, often in secret.”Inspired by the museum’s Soviet Hippie collection, an archive that documents the suppressed Soviet subculture of the 1960s through photos, clothing and memorabilia, the workshops use historical events as foundations for creative prompts.Since the workshops started last year, Ingold has hosted a diverse number of sessions and continues to teach every other Sunday.One workshop featured the creation of “mini moon bags,” modeled after pouches from the Soviet Hippie collection.

Another session focused on writing letters to outer space, an act influenced by the race to the moon.In each workshop, Ingold encourages students to use discarded textile material to make art.“There are trillions and trillions of new images being generated now by AI,” Ingold said.

“Textiles give...