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Monument and Motion (2016)
On December 8, 2013, a group of protesters toppled the statue of Vladimir Lenin that, immobile and watchful, stood as the last monument dedicated to the founder of the Soviet Union still standing in Kyiv, Ukraine. With its collapse, the figure was reduced to hundreds of fragments of red Karelian stone, which members of the crowd collected and carried away as souvenirs. This was one of many events that took place during Euromaidan, a wave of protests and demonstrations demanding Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, greater distance from the Russian government, and which ultimately led to the 2014 revolution and the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych.
The decline of Soviet influence became visible in streets, plazas, and public spaces through the dismantling of many other monuments across Ukraine, in a historical episode known as Leninfall. Since then, the pedestal that once supported the Soviet leader in the Ukrainian capital has remained empty, exposed, and vulnerable.
Both the decline of Soviet symbols and icons and the controversy surrounding the process of decommunization in Ukraine laid the groundwork for Social Contract, a project curated by Kateryna Filyuk and hosted by the cultural initiatives platform Izolyatsia. In 2016, Social Contract presented an exhibition, a public program, and a temporary installation intended to open a dialogue about “the status and functions of commemorative objects in urban space, using the case of Lenin’s statue in Kyiv as an example.” (1) With this premise, an open call was launched for an artistic intervention at the site, and Inhabiting Shadows, a project by Mexican artist Cynthia Gutiérrez (Guadalajara, 1978) (2), was selected.
For this intervention, Gutiérrez installed a metal scaffolding structure functioning as a platform that elevated pedestrian traffic and directed it toward the empty pedestal, allowing passersby to stand momentarily in the place once occupied by the Soviet leader before descending and continuing on their way. In doing so, visitors were able to contemplate views of the city that had once been exclusive to Lenin’s sculpture. The monument’s immobility was activated through the temporary occupation of a space reserved for memory.
Although the fall of monuments does not in itself constitute a political conclusion or solution, it serves as a mechanism for confronting the change inherent in the development of a revolution. The temporary occupation of the pedestal implies an upward journey and the abandonment of limiting convictions that function as anchors to a completed past. The activation of the work can be understood as a process of mourning for a dying idea, while the return to solid ground becomes a commemoration of a “nation in the making.”
Yet the artist’s intentions with this installation extend beyond taking a political position on a history that is not her own. Rather, it is a reflection on the value and significance of commemorative emblems, one that contributes to a broader investigation into sculpture and monuments that transcends territories, nations, and ideologies.
Gutiérrez’s work is characterized by a rigorous examination of the fragility of memory, the fractures of history, and the constructions that shape national, cultural, and biographical identity. With a strong artistic inheritance (3) and formal training as a sculptor, her practice is distinguished by the ruptures—both literal and metaphorical—that she introduces into sculptural language.
For the artist, the idea of the monument is linked to a material mark that, despite its physical stability, remains in a constant state of reinterpretation. The primitive notion of the monument as a funerary marker that replaced the body in the earth and extended it toward the heavens through its colossal scale has been displaced, transforming it into a trophy of war, a symbol of power, conquest, and manipulation. Many of these commemorative objects have ceased to function as emblems of belonging and identity, becoming instead objects of fetishistic devotion—heritage artifacts that evoke what has been forgotten yet feel disconnected from a present that no longer looks back.
Like the pedestrians who temporarily occupied the place of that crimson granite figure, the meanings attached to monuments are, for the artist, in motion: they shift, relocate, and reemerge across different moments, spaces, and definitions.
(1) http://izolyatsia.org/en/project/social-contract
(2) Member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators (Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte), 2016.
(3) Her father, Juan Gutiérrez, is a renowned Mexican sculptor who was commissioned to create various busts and public sculptures that have become notable features of Mexico’s urban landscape. For the artist, this legacy is both an advantage and a constraint.