Svoboda
SVOBODA
ELIZAVETA KONOVALOVA
06.02.2020 - 14.03.2020
Press release
Svoboda
takes the story of a monument erected in Moscow in 1918 as part of the monumental propaganda plan initiated at the time by Lenin. The Monument to the Soviet Constitution, the central work in this plan, is an obelisk adorned by a female statue, an allegory of freedom. In 1941 the monument was demolished, in uncertain circumstances.
In 2018 Elizaveta Konovalova came across these traces, when she saw the replica of the statue on the bas-reliefs of a bridge in central Moscow. This miniature reproduction is indeed the only reminiscence of the monument in the city today.
The metamorphoses that the sculpture underwent by changing scale, then over time, produce new meanings. The title, borrowed from the original work, has the triggering role: Svoboda comes from the Russian Freedom. Elizaveta meticulously collects the forms on the ground, places them in context by tracing the fate of the monument, and deploys the whole in the exhibition space.