War and Art: Mykhailo Kolodko War is not inspiring: it is energy that moves.

Mykhailo Kolodko is a sculptor known in Europe and worldwide for his miniature statues, which he places illegally in public spaces, in streets and squares, waterfronts and parks. His guerrilla art makes passers-by stop and think. Lately, the Russian invasion has been the subject of many of his works.
 

Mykhailo Kolodko’s mini-statues are examples of “guerrilla art”, works that pop up unexpectedly and illegally, i.e. without any official authorization. Kolodko has placed dozens of his works in various countries around the world, for example in Uzhhorod, his Ukrainian hometown, and Budapest, where he’s been living with his family for six years now.

Mykhailo Kolodko’s recent work is marked by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched by Russia on 24 February 2022. On the Moszkva sétány, or “Moscow Promenade”, in Budapest he placed a tiny statue. The whole thing is a graphic illustration of a Ukrainian boarder guard’s defiant rejoinder to a call for surrender issued by the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, before it attacked Snake Island: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.” This slogan has since become a rallying cry of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invaders.

The sculpture "Russian warship": Kolodko places the main accent on the stone stinky finger with a signet ring showing the Ukrainian national emblem, the trident. The finger shows the Russian warship which way to go. Precisely because it is so large, the finger looks extremely expressive. But to see the "Russian ship", you have to look closely. It is so small on purpose: Kolodko compares it to a louse that can be squashed with a fingernail. Putin's head on the ship is even smaller: Kolodko does not attach much importance to it, he only shows it so that one understands where the ship came from before it entered foreign territory. | © Mykhailo Kolodko In the following interview, Kolodko talks about this statue and other works of his, as well as about sculptural forms of “partisan art”, how his work is viewed by the Hungarian people and the powers that be, and why “silent” art is important during a war.

Mykhailo, you’re a Ukrainian expat in Hungary. How did the launch of this full-scale war of aggression affect you?

At first, I couldn’t work at all when the war broke out. But some sort of energy welled up inside me, seeking an outlet. I didn’t know where to channel this current. But it was clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to work the way I had before. The content crystalized, my works became “sharper”. After a few days I understood what this energy was: it was my sorrow about Ukraine. It manifested itself in my first war-inspired sculpture: the Russian warship.

Have you found your way to a new stage in your art?

At the beginning of the war, I was desperate and couldn’t do a thing – neither continue as before nor find something new. What happened at Snake Island was a sudden epiphany to me. In my Russian warship, I managed to capture the dawn of Ukraine’s heroic era. I’m living in Budapest, which has a waterfront called Moscow Promenade, so I told Putin and his soldiers where to get off just as the Ukrainian border guards and basically all of Ukrainian society have done.

The statue is dedicated to the Ukrainian border guard who mustered the courage to stand up to Russian evil. His message was quick and terse, but brave. It set the tone of Ukrainian resistance. It was a great motivation, a force that has held to this day. At long last there was a country that had found the courage to fight against cruel tyranny and aggression.

The sculpture "No Compote". Kolodko based this work on an episode from the Hungarian film comedy "Tizedes és a többiek" ("The Corporal and the Others"): during World War II, a Hungarian family hid a wounded Russian soldier in their pantry. Then German soldiers came into the house and demanded compote. The housewife claimed not to have any compote - she did not want to betray the soldier in the pantry. One of the Germans did open the door, but there stood the Russian with a gun in his hand, and all the Nazis ran away. The Russian stayed. In his sculpture, Kolodko placed next to the soldier a typical Hungarian chair with an extremely large seat, implying that the Muscovite was very comfortable. | © Mykhailo Kolodko After 24 February, you made another statue called “No Compote” of a Soviet soldier sitting behind the door of a pantry with a machine gun in his hands. What’s the story behind it?

The underlying metaphor is that, to this day, Hungarians have been offering refuge to this Russian soldier who isn’t fighting Nazis anymore but has joined the side of evil himself. It’s an apparently straightforward story, but with a deeper meaning: If Russia comes to your country, they’re shameless – they stay for good and make themselves at home. And they eat up all your compote! My works seek to intimate to Hungarian society the danger involved in the sympathy for and flirtation with Russia that is unmistakably present and ongoing in Hungarian politics and society.

Is your latest work, “Among Us”, also about this Russian presence?

There’s a computer game called Among Us in which you have to find a traitor and slaughter him. Then a bone pops up on the screen. I put two such bones in my statue. Back in 1956, Hungarians thought taking down the Stalin monument also meant putting an end to Stalinism in Hungary. And indeed, there are no visual signs of Soviet ideology left in the square. But this is not the case in Hungarian minds: Witness their friendship with Putin today.

I got the idea for this statue before the war broke out. 1956 is an important year in Hungarian history, and October 23rd is a national holiday. It commemorates the terrible tragedy when the Soviet government sought to quash the revolution by sending tanks into Budapest that ran over demonstrators. I thought Hungary had learned an important lesson from that. But I see that the Soviets are still here, well camouflaged. The politicians put up monuments to the uprising, and yet you still hear Russian composers and praise for them on the radio here every day. Which is incomprehensible in view of the war in Ukraine.

The sculpture "Among Us" shows bones sticking out of boots. Kolodko's idea: they belong to the two Russian dictators - one Stalin, the other Putin. The subject connects the present with the events of 1956, when on October 23 in Budapest the uprising of the Hungarian people broke out against the communist regime. Already on November 11 of the same year, the Soviet army had stifled this revolution. On Ötvenhatosok Square stood a huge monument to Stalin. The figure itself could be knocked down by the demonstrators during the 1956 uprising; only his boots remained in the square. Kolodko wants to say: There is no longer a monument to Stalin, but his supporters are still among us. So is the Russian presence with Putin at its head. | © Mykhailo Kolodko Your first public statue in Budapest was a tank with its limp gun bent downwards. Was it also dedicated to the 1956 uprising?

Hungarians celebrated the 60th anniversary of the revolution in 2016. Many artists dedicated their works to the uprising. Several monuments were erected in the city. But it struck me as window dressing. They wanted to distract the population so no one would notice – God forbid! – that the government have been dallying with Russia to this day, and they’re stuck in the relationship owing to their dependence on Russian gas. What they’re effectively saying is: Go right ahead and observe the anniversary, commemorate the tragedy of this revolution all you like, but that won’t stop us from politically manipulating you.

I tried to find something of my own, something simple and readily recognizable. A tank is a tank. Everyone knows that a tank is a weapon – a comprehensible symbol. Putin often came to Hungary in those days. I think that’s one reason the inscription about the Russians was rubbed off. So the question is: If you’re commemorating the tragedy caused by Russia, then why rub out the inscription? Apparently, words hit harder, visuals alone have a softer effect. Which is why my tank sculpture – without the inscription – has been allowed to stay there on the Budapest embankment, facing the Hungarian parliament, to this day.

The sculpture "Bashful tank" is a representation of a Soviet tank Т 34. Such tanks were in use during the Second World War and also in Budapest in 1956. The sculpture was inscribed in Hungarian: "Ruszkik Háza" - "Russians, go home!". However, the inscription was wiped off twice. The tank tube is bent downwards, Kolodko thinks: Maybe the tank is ashamed of what it has done? | © Mykhailo Kolodko What is the attitude of the local authorities towards your art?

I don’t work to order for the powers that be. My works are prompted solely by my inner motivations and tensions. As long as my sculptures are still displayed here in the city, that means they resonate in the hearts of Hungarians. Otherwise the local public utilities could have simply removed them.

But there have been some scandals. On Szabadság tér [Liberty Square], Budapest’s main square, there’s a monument to the Soviet liberators with a huge shiny gold Kremlin star on top. The monument is maintained by the local authorities and always adorned with flowers and guarded by the police. It immediately struck me as a contradiction: Hungary seems to be Europe, so why all this veneration for the Soviets?

I wanted to unravel this conundrum and communicate with the public through my art. So, in late 2017, I placed a provocative sculpture of an ushanka, a cap with earflaps, on the square. I was curious to see how Hungarians would react to my artistic brainwave.
  One local politician was so infuriated that he chopped off the ushanka with an axe and threw it into the Danube. Which made for quite a splash. I could see his political blindness: He destroys my little sculpture but leaves the big Communist star alone. On the other hand, I felt plenty of popular support. Society condemned the politician at the time. People got the point and could read between the lines. After this violent reaction, people gave me more of a hearing and began to understand what my works mean.
  The politician’s act didn’t stop or silence me. In fact, I answered him in early 2018 by putting a sculpture of an axe – and the dent it made – in the very place the cap had been before. I wanted to suggest that an axe is a strange tool in the hands of a member of the government. That sculpture was not attacked: it’s still there.

This whole incident reaffirmed that Soviet ideology is still all too present in Hungary these days. This is dangerous. Ukraine is paying a heavy price nowadays to liberate itself from Russian invaders.

Does that mean Hungarian and Ukrainian society are comparable in this regard?

I emigrated six years ago, and I still find the same nuances of Russian influence here. But all that is changing in Ukraine now – thanks to the war and the tremendous sacrifices involved, as awful as that may sound.

What kind of Russian pressure did you feel when you were still living in Ukraine?

I felt the imposition of all things Russian in Ukraine for a long time, even way before 2014. That was hard on me as a native speaker of both Ukrainian and Hungarian. My maternal grandmother was Hungarian. She used to tell me fairy tales in Hungarian and would take me with her to Hungary. So I got to know Hungarian culture passively, without giving it any conscious thought. Ever since then I’ve felt a mental affinity with that culture, which I wanted to share with my children, too.

So we sent our daughter to the kindergarten of the Hungarian minority in Uzhhorod. But she didn’t learn any Hungarian there, she learned Russian. Same story at Ukrainian schools. That was hard on me, especially after the Russian military invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. That was one of my reasons for emigrating: to escape Russian influence.

Another reason had to do with my art. As an artist, I’m always looking for an empty stage for the expression my emotions. In my case, it’s monumental sculpture, which flourishes in public space and not in exhibitions. After having filled much of my hometown of Uzhhorod with my works, I made up my mind to move to Hungary for good to get away from the oppressive Russian influence. As it turned out, however, that influence caught up with me here, too. But I found artistic ways of talking about it.

Would you say you’re inspired by the war?

Like many of my colleagues, I wouldn’t use the word “inspired”. But war is energy that moves. There’s no denying that. And this energy activates certain capabilities: When you don’t have time to ruminate, you do what you’re capable of doing. The exposed nerves become more sensitive to everything that happens in these difficult times. Which is reflected in the subjects and ideas behind the statues.

My unauthorized art interventions are like a war game. This is how I fight for enlightenment on my front. At first I wanted to “stage” my works secretly, anonymously. But the Hungarians soon unmasked me because the style of my works is unmistakable.

The partisan style in art can be compared to street art or graffiti. But my works are wordless, straightforward and vivid. Even a child can fully understand them at first sight and explain them to someone else. The statues are set where they have to be. They have a lasting effect and each contains and conveys all the necessary information. They may be small, but their message is monumental.

This article was first published in December 2022 in Jàdu, a German-Czech-Slovak online magazine.