Back in the early days of the “Leninfall,” when people and municipal services across the country demolished full-scale monuments and busts to the “great leader,” the Lenin monument that stood at Teatralna station of the capital city’s subway was hidden behind a sheet of plywood, thus moving it out of sight of Kyivan activists. Most observers would agree that the station’s look was hardly improved by this measure. Therefore, proactive graffiti artists decided to make a good picture for Teatralna, which would correspond to its name. Where a bust of Lenin stood once, the customers will soon see... a theater scene! The 3D graffiti work will be unveiled at this subway station on November 6.
“This project is done exclusively by our company Wallstreet. We came up with it, designed it, proposed to the subway and are now executing it,” the author of the idea, chief manager of interactive fine arts company Wallstreet Dmytro Nykoliuk told The Day. “For more than a month, I have seen these ugly sheets of particle board on every passage through Teatralna station. Therefore, we decided to bring the station’s look into compliance with its name and paint a theater auditorium there. We have developed the picture, and our outline was endorsed by the Ministry of Culture and the subway’s management. We have been working on this graffiti for a week and a half already. Even though the monument remains at the station for now, having a Lenin behind the scenes is preferable to having a monument in public view, or hidden behind a sheet of plain plywood.”
According to Nykoliuk, Wallstreet has implemented many social projects, as the artists painted the Kyiv Zoo recently and have been helping orphanages by painting their interiors.
