Kharkiv artists say a merry goodbye to the past

KHARKIV – Young artists from Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Minsk took some time to ponder over the image of the leader and power in the contemporary world. The paintings and video recordings, fruit of their speculations, are now displayed at the Kharkiv Municipal Gallery.

Saying goodbye to the iconic image of the Soviet leader was a merry event, serving as yet another proof to the maxim that mankind laughs as it parts with its past. However, Maria Honchar and Olha Lannyk, curators of the Mausoleum Renaissance Project from Odesa, say that they aimed at a serious research into the mechanisms of power rather than the ridicule of the past, although they do admit the irony of some works.

The project’s idea was to apply new elements to the old Soviet-time pictures in order to add new senses to the images. The time span from conception to implementation was nearly a year. Old paintings were found at abandoned warehouses, in museums’ stock rooms, or offered by private owners. The authors say that they had no trouble getting the “material,” moreover, it was either dirt cheap or free. Commissioned portraits of Lenin have long become unwanted trash and were gradually finding their way from offices and schools to dumps. One might say that the young artists have granted the former leader’s portraits a new lease on life and added value, speaking in Marxist terms.

Yuliana Alimova, a Kharkiv-based painter, presented Lenin as a hollow jedi. She says that originally her picture was called Laser Lenin. The sword (which actually is nothing other but a rolled issue of Pravda, clasped in his fist) has turned into a metaphysical symbol. This is how new myths oust the old ones and warn us against repeating past mistakes. Or at least this is what the masterminds of the event imply.

Remarkably, this exhibit acquires a peculiar twang in Kharkiv, whose main square is still dominated by a huge figure of Lenin.