A monument to all lovers will be erected in Kharkiv. It will represent a young man and a girl flying and uniting in a kiss. Statues of angels and cherubs will surround them. There are plenty of ideas in this project, like an unseen dripping fountain to keep the space under the airborne paramours appropriately wet.
The author of the monument is Dmytro Ivanchenko, a student at the Kharkiv Arts and Industry Institute. His group won the contest of students’ works for this statue. The project’s chief architect Viktor Vodolazky is far from young: more proof that all ages obey the dictates of Eros. And not only ages but also organizations: the monument to lovers was ordered by none other than Kharkiv Oblast Administration.
The juiciest part is that the monument will be erected in a public garden in Independence Square, right behind the huge statue of Lenin. Thus the granite Illich will greet passersby and invite them to visit the garden and pet.
The architects chose the site not by accident. It is to become a symbol of our society’s depoliticization. Independence Square (former Dzerzhinsky Square) was constructed as a completely official place for military parades and demonstrations. At that time Kharkiv was capital of the Ukrainian SSR, and architects created the largest square in Europe for nationwide festivities with tanks and red banners. Most probably the site for such an apolitical monument was chosen well, since the place no longer hosts military parades, while in the evenings the square is crowded by coupling couples.
The work will start as soon as this year. At a meeting of the city planning council Chairman of the Kharkiv Oblast State Administration Yevhen Kushnariov said that it would be financed partly by the oblast and partly by Kharkiv city. Incidentally, love still costs dear. Casting and erecting the monument will cost 300,000 hryvnias, while full reconstruction of the square in accordance with European standards (after all, it is in every textbook on architecture as an example of the Constructivism style) requires from four to five million hryvnias, including even replacement of old trees — just to make kissing cosier.
