Julian Assange visits artist who kept $45 million worth of art in custody

Andrei Molodkin, the artist who made headlines earlier this year when he took a $45 million piece of art “hostage” – threatening to destroy it if Julian Assange died in prison – is publicly showing his portrait of the WikiLeaks founder for the first time on display at the National Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The 2.2m x 1.7m work, carefully drawn with a humble pen, is what the conceptual artist describes as an “artistic gesture” intended to draw attention to the detention of the WikiLeaks founder. His title, Freedom date (2024) refers to Assange’s release from Belmarsh Prison in London on June 24, where he was held awaiting extradition to the US, where he faces charges including espionage. Assange spent four years in custody and another seven in self-imposed exile at the Ecuadorian embassy in London before his release this summer.

Work that began in February after the death in custody of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was finally carried out last month when Assange visited Molodkin in southern France. In the blank space left by Molodkin, he could write his release date in the hope that one day he would be free to “finish” the job.

After his speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) in Strasbourg last month, Assange traveled to La Raillère, a former spa resort near the French-Spanish border that Molodkin turned into an artist’s space. It was there that the artist built a 32-ton vault in which more than a dozen works were buried – including some by Rembrandt, Picasso and Warhol, as well as contemporary works donated by collectors or the artists themselves. Next to them was a device – a “dead man’s switch” set to a timer – that could reduce the contents to dust using a remote mechanism that mimicked methods used by US security agencies as a last resort security measure in embassies, the artist says.

“Freedom of expression and everything that flows from it is at a dark crossroads,” Assange said in Strasbourg, speaking to the Council’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. “I fear that if standard-setting institutions like Pace do not wake up to the seriousness of the problem, it will be too late.”

“The date that Assange drew with a pen to complete his portrait is the counter of rest…” says Molodkin. “Its ticking reminds us that in times of disaster, art history can transform into a new form – a pile of gray ashes.”

describes Molodkin Dead man’s switch as a kind of “symbolic portrait”, referring his work to what he calls the “political minimalism” of artists such as Santiago Sierra, with whom he exhibits in East Westa two-person exhibition at Kvadrat 500, an extension of the National Gallery in Sofia. The artists argue that the existence of political prisoners is a critical indicator of the condition of democratic institutions and their approach to human rights.

The exhibition, supported by a/political – a London-based organization founded by Andrei Tretyakov of Bluewire Capital in London and focusing on socio-political art – opens on November 26 and runs until February 16, 2025. Sierra, best known for contributing to the construction of the pavilion Spanish at the Venice Biennale in 2003, blocking the entrance, showing his works Political prisoners in contemporary Spain (2018), which was censored in his home country, and a work of his own Veterans number. Molodkin shows his pen drawing of Navalny next to Assange’s portrait. He will also present some of his sculptural installations, including: Blood democracywhich includes human blood donated by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.

“Everyone is so afraid of World War III and a new level of confrontation,” Moldkin says. “Dead man’s switch described in over 300 publications. It shows that art can change our view of the world.”