‘The doorbell went at 5am. Six masked men were outside’: Belarus Free Theatre bring totalitarian terror to the Venice Biennale

They’ve been imprisoned, tortured and spied upon. Now dissidents from Europe’s last dictatorship are bringing the sights, sounds, smells and even tastes of brutal repression to the world’s biggest festival of artIn a studio down a residential road in west Warsaw, a group of former political prisoners are cutting golden stems of wheat to 90cm lengths and stacking them, ready to be shipped to the Venice Biennale. A giant ball made of books banned in the neighbouring country of Belarus – Harry Potter, Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an illustrated history of kink – rests on the claw of a bulldozer. There is the sound of laughter, organ music and an angle-grinder, as surveillance cameras are attached to a towering iron crucifix.This is Official. Unofficial. Belarus., the first major art project by Belarus Free Theatre (BFT). Unusually, this work by the exiled troupe has no performance element but has instead been created by painters, sculptors, composers and even the man