Wer hat Angst vor Pappmaché?

Jacques Tilly has resolutely and imperturbably put his work in the service of an open society for decades now while taking the harshest personal attacks along the way in stride. He has politicised carnival and uses the framework offered by the Carnival Monday parade to stage his sharp and pointed ideology critique before hundreds of thousands of people at the roadside.

He does not shy away from controversy or from confrontation with state powers or influential institutions: Whoever assaults democracy and human rights can be sure to be critically commended, in the form of large-scale satirical sculptures that have increasingly also ventured outside of the carnival context. Numerous NGOs and political activists, both nationally and abroad, are now making use of Tilly’s three-dimensional supersize caricatures to call attention to their concerns.

Criminal proceedings against Jacques Tilly were initiated in Russia at the end of 2025. His Putin-critical floats were accused of peddling “false information about the Russian military” as well as of “hurting religious feelings”. A Moscow court sentenced him to eight years in a prison camp in April of 2026. The case was commented on by the international press for weeks because this is an unprecedented incident and marks a new step in the escalation of Putin against free speech and free arts.

In his picture presentation, Jacques Tilly talks about his longstanding activities as well as about the most current political occurrences surrounding his work. Simultaneously, he will introduce his new book Wer hat Angst vor Pappmaché? (Alibri), which he publishes together with Eva Creutz, during the evening. The book contains numerous pictures of and texts and statements on many political floats from the years of 2021 until 2026 as well as on the farce of his sentence delivered by the Russian state. It will be available in bookstores from October 8th.