Mirror without reflection

Year: 2015

Status: Competition proposal

Location: Moscow

Concept for competition "Monument to victims of political repressions".  

The great majority of monuments refer to certain historical event. Man in the street usually has no concern what had happened half a century ago, therefore his emotional charge is minimal after visiting conventional monuments. But this proposal appeals to everybody without exception and dumbfounds with the message.

In times of mass political repressions it was an absolute norm, when a man suddenly disappeared without any lead. There was a man, but already not. A vacuum was formed instead of him, a void. The emptiness and the absence are the main leitmotif of the presented work .

The main part of the momument is the room with several mirrors. They reflect everything but people. There is emtiness instead of everybody. Each person disappears from reality. Thus every visitor for a few minutes feels on the spot of those who the monument is dedicated to. The visitor trying to understand his sudden "disappearance"  asks himselm questions of existential nature, death, the value of life, about the inadmissibility of the repressive practices in society, and so on.