Collection

The video piece Monument documents the dismantling of a Soviet workers’ monument in Kharkov, as part of a campaign to “purge” the city of relics from the past before the Euro 2012 championships. The empty pedestals (the “heroes” of Ridnyi’s series of sculptures Platforms, which is sometimes exhibited together with Monument) are a sign of the post-Communist times. They show how we fear the modern-day heroes to whom monuments could be erected, or do not want them, or simply have none at all. On the other hand, this documentation of workers removing Soviet proletarian heroes from their pedestals is an oblique question about the value of work in society today, and a commentary on the situation in which monuments to outdated ideology are eliminated to accommodate new manifestations of a political nature. Thus, Ridnyi’s work criticises both history and its changing “ideals”, as well as modern times, which seem to lack ideals in general.