THE FALLING
2021-22
This work is an exploration of movement as a static image, employing the principle of chronophotography and converting it into the three- dimensional form.
It is addressing Decommunization - a campaign in Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics, aimed to remove communist symbolism, including monumental propaganda, from the public sphere and space. One of the main targets are monuments to controversial Soviet leaders. Even though the USSR has collapsed more than 30 years ago, the conversation around its legacy and the effect of colonial history is still on-going.
What's been literally solid and solidly unquestionable gains a fluid and ephemeral quality. A statue can be dismantled rapidly, but the continuous process of toppling idols, reconsidering identities and dealing with the consequences of consistent ideological propaganda, is much more durable and complicated. This proposal allows a statue to remain and fall at the same time - critically engage with history and question those who were and are in power. This work could be considered as a proposal for action and for no action at the same time.
Digital collage from the found photograph
Casting wax, 30cm high
Originally, it was intended as a monument to a specific historical persona - Vladimir Lenin, whose pictorial and sculptural depictions were the most common in urban spaces of the former USSR. However, I’ve decided to depersonalize the statue and make it anonymous in order to emphasize the commonality of demonumentalization processes as a worldwide phenomenon in both post-colonial and post-imperial states.
Firstly, working with wax for practical reason, I later realized that this material itself may be semantically and symbolically potent.The softness and delicacy of wax goes into contradiction with the traits associated with a monument, such as permanence, stability and solidity. Translucency adds a ghostly quality and gives an impression of an ephemeral trace of a moment of falling. Additionally, in a physical form and in this material the image developed a resemblance with an uncanny mythical mutating living organism or baroque avalanche of human bodies.
