Take a tour across Moldova’s Soviet-era public art with this Insta account
30 January 2020
Text:
Paula Erizanu
Photographer Anton Polyakov’s Instagram account, @visual_anthropology_of_moldova pulls back the layers of cultural heritage in Moldova, presenting Soviet propaganda alongside hand-carved crucifixes and traditional peasant houses.
You’ll get plenty of examples of USSR’s favourite street art — mosaics, which decorated both bus stops and public buildings with colourful interpretations of the Soviet ideals (although sometimes, like in the power station pictured below, they crossed paths with ancient Greek figures such as Prometheus).
Primarily covering Polyakov’s native Transnistria, the account documents the Lenin monuments surviving in the self-declared breakaway republic, despite having been knocked down in the rest of the country.
In addition to its Soviet art selection, @visual_anthropology_of_moldova also features rural staples such as traditional peasant houses and the widely-spread use of crucifixes usually found by crossroads in the Moldovan countryside.
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