Kiev’s Izolyatsia presents Endless Celebration installation where Lenin once stood

Next week Kiev-based cultural platform Izolyatsia will unveil Endless Celebration, a temporary installation by Iranian artist Mahmoud Bakhshi at the site where Lenin’s monument used to stand.

The Endless Celebration forms part of Izolyatsia’s Social Contract project, which explores the status and functions of commemorative objects in public space in the post-Maidan context, taking Kiev’s Lenin statue and its eventual demise in December 2013 as a central point of reflection.

Bakshi’s installation serves as a subjective and ironical comment on the monument and a visual expression of the radical decision to dismantle it. The artist makes use of traffic light colours to signal both finality and progression: red to convey the impossibility of a return to the past, green and yellow to signpost possible new directions. The faces of Lenin, the Virgin Mary and pop superstar Madonna can be read as symbolic of three pillars of society: ideology, religion and economy.

Izolyatsia will unveil the Endless Celebration on Monday 7 November at 6pm, and Bakshi will take part in an artist talk on 8 November at 7pm at the IZONE creative community. More information can be found here.

Izolyatsia is a not-for-profit, non-governmental platform for contemporary culture that was founded in 2010 in Donetsk and is now based in Kiev. On 9 June 2014, the Isolyatsia complex in Donetsk was seized by the militia of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic”.