You're reading: New art installation set up over demolished Lenin monument

Since Kyiv’s last remaining Vladimir Lenin statue was toppled in December 2013, the plinth on which it stood has mostly remained empty.

Humorously and informally, a toilet
spray-painted gold (to symbolize the corrupt regime of runaway ex-President
Viktor Yanukovych) for a short time occupied the spot, in the center of Kyiv,
overlooking the Besarabsky market.

Now a new art installation, called
“Inhabiting Shadows,” which takes the form of a metal staircase installed over
the plinth, has opened to the public. Until July 14,anyone is able to climb the
stairs to the top of the plinth where the communist leader’s statue used to
stand, and take his place.

But its creator, Mexican artist Cynthia
Gutierrez, hopes the work will also prompt visitors to think about the
instability of history.

“For me it’s important that this project
provokes certain discussion about pressing memories, identity, history,” Gutierrez
says.

The “Inhabiting Shadows” installation was
created as part of Suspilny Dohovir (Social Contract), a cultural project
dedicated to rethinking history, the future of public spaces, alternative
monuments, memorial sites and the decommunization process.The project is run by
Izolyatsiya, a non-profit platform for contemporary culture.

Since April, when Izolyatsiya announced a
competition for the best art installation for the site of the toppled Lenin
monument in Kyiv, it received 21 project offers from artists around the world –
Mexico, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Chile, Spain, Belgium, Latvia, Thailand,
Russia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Gutierrez’s installation was picked
as the winner.

The author of the art installation “Inhabiting Shadows” Mexican artist Cynthia
Gutierrez (L) stands on the top of
the plinth where Lenin statue used to
stand in Kyiv on July 7.

“The process of ascent and descent from the
pedestal refers to the variability of history, in which various historical
figures are first praised and then vilified by a society,” says Suspilny Dohovir cultural
project coordinator Kateryna Filyuk. “I think it’s the variety of
interpretations (of the installation) that impressed the members of the contest
jury.”

Lenin’s statue had stood on the corner of
Shevchenko Boulevard and Khreshchatyk Street in central Kyiv for 67 years until
it was toppled by protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution in December of 2013.
The downing of Lenin’s statue in Kyiv launched a nationwide wave of removals of
monuments to Lenin and other Soviet communist leaders.

So far, 1,018 Lenin statues have been
toppled in Ukraine, but more than a thousand of them are left, according to Deputy
Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko.

Disputes over what type of monument should replace
the toppled Lenin in Kyiv erupted the day after the statue was torn down and
smashed. There were proposals to erect a statue of the Virgin Mary or a monument
to Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa. Some suggested that there should be a monument
to poet and writer Taras Shevchenko or the Heavenly Hundred – the EuroMaidan
protesters shot by the security forces during the revolution. Others argue that
the pedestal should be left without a monument.

The heated debates are overshadowed, among
other things, by the grim history of the spot –German troops used to hang
prisoners in public during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv in 1941–1943 at the site of
the old Lenin monument.

After the current temporary art
installation is removed, discussion about a future monument will resume again.
Filyuk says that Gutierrez’s artwork also addresses this variety of choices for a
future monument.

“Temporary constructions and the use of scaffolding
emphasize dynamism, incompleteness and therefore openness to different
proposals regarding the future of the monument,” she said.

Anyone can climb the stairs, but ladies in
high heels and people who have been drinking are forbidden to climb the stairs due
to the height of the installation.