This project is part of: voices from the centerIt is not my aim to add or steal anything from our memory. I wish to show the objects of the past as they were. Each one has already a complete story written inside.
Surfing on internet I found different websites selling or dealing with or talking about objects from socialism. Beside the official presentations and photos, I found comments of page visitors, many of them with kind of nostalgia. I realized that these objects, specially the objects of consume, turned out to be our common memory, and connected more to our personal experiences, childhood and friends, then to the regime. These dead, re-produced objects worked as a freshly found key to our memory.
I decided to re – paint those objects on the paper in their real size and to glue them on the walls in public spaces in Slovak cities: Bratislava, Kosice, Zilina. The only comment about these objects is my personal style of painting/drawing. There is no any other comment needed.
Tatra 613-1 VB, the prominent police car, was used specially as security car for transport of politicians. As the colours and sign of “public security”, the police of the socialist regime, are associated with repression, the car itself represents the showcase of Czechoslovak technology, while the design of the car was done by Italian firm. This painting was glued on the wall next to the New bridge in Bratislava, one of the most celebrated and most hated socialist projects in the city.
Green Trabant is one of the most iconic symbols of socialism. What interested me more was the fact, that many families, mostly less wealthy ones used this car, so it turned out to be the other member of the family. The symbol of cheap holidays in campings in croatia, or in mountains... Also to see green trabant used mean a luck; in the same way, as it works with chimney cleaners...
Pedro chewing gum was a dream of every child.(me included). You could make incredible bubbles with it. The whole childhood of my generation is written in that chewing gum.
Aurora is the boat, known as the one, that started revolution in Russia. I remember, i won once a competition with painting of that boat. It was pleasure to paint that boat, as we were tought, that the boat was a peace boat and shoot just once. Right into direction of the winter palace...
And then gagarin is just an icon of the regime. There are two persons, one real person with his finally tragic destiny and another: shiny figure of an ideal man with some child purity in his face and a slight smile. The first person in space. The one, that turned spotlight of world to russia.
