The Den editorial office moved to Kyiv’s Sviatoshynsky district almost four years ago, but the new location is still offering us amazing acquaintances and discoveries.
Just 1,000 steps away – first 800 to Zhytomyrska metro station and then 200 to the second right turn, – a little bronze child sleeps on a big metallic head of cabbage.
This very sentimental sculpture appeared here three and a half years ago on March 6, 2013.
It has two names. The official one, given by Kiev Fashion Park project activists who are also authors of benches on Peizazhna Alley, is “You’ll Have a Child,” while local folks call it “Little Cabbage Patch.”
Next to the sculpture is a medical clinic, Ilaia. This company in fact funded the construction of “Little Cabbage Patch” in Sviatoshynsky district. The clinic specializes in reproductive medicine. You can often see a couple here that dreams of “finding a healthy baby in a cabbage patch.”
As the sculpture was being officially unveiled, one of its initiators said from the stage that “Little Cabbage Patch” could fulfill wishes – if you rub the buttocks of the bronze kid sleeping on the cabbage head, you are sure to have an addition to your family. People believe this and rub actively. As a result, the bronze bottom glitters much more than the rest of the statue.
As the Kiev Fashion Park project manager Olena Zubkova told The Day, the sculpture “You’ll Have a Child” is unique in that it found its patron almost immediately. As a matter of fact, no sooner had the sculptor sent his work to the project’s “bank of ideas” than they found those who wanted to gift it to the city.
Sculptor Dmytro Iv, “Little Cabbage Patch’s” “father,” once came across a muse on his way to a supermarket. It was a head of the common Brussels sprouts. “What attracted me as a sculptor was its clear-cut figure with all those veins. And I thought it would be interesting to work with this material and place a baby onto the cabbage,” Iv says in a comment to The Day.
The author knows that people have vested his work with magic properties. He thinks this is recognition. “It pleases me very much that this work of mine is popular among city residents,” Iv says.
The sculptor confesses that he keeps a small replica of the sculpture at home “in memory of the work done.”
Dmytro Iv comes from Zaporizhia. He graduated from the Kharkiv State Art School and the Kharkiv Academy of Design and Arts. He lives and works in Kharkiv. Many of his artworks are kept in private collections in Ukraine as well as in Europe and Russia. Last autumn he won the silver prize at a festival of contemporary art in London. “It is an important event for me,” Dmytro says.
Kharkivites know their fellow countryman as the author of “Kiss.” Iv’s monument to lovers is Kharkiv’s “eighth wonder” of sorts on Arkhitektoriv Square. Photo sessions on this square are now almost a mandatory rite for all the couples that visit the city. Thanks to “Kiss,” Arkhitektoriv Square is now presented in guidebooks and tourist blogs as Kharkiv’s most romantic place.
The master’s artworks also adorn the streets of Berdiansk, Cargnacco (Italy), and Belgorod (Russia). Iv spends a lot of time in Italy, doing custom-made jobs. One of them is the monument in Cargnacco (north of Venice) to the Italian Alpini, the partisans who fought against fascism. The master has also patented a number of his own inventions that have no analogues in the world. Among them is the mockup of a skyscraper that attracted the attention of Dubai’s crown prince who is known for his passion for unusual and eccentric architectural decisions.
In addition to the sculpture in question, one can also see Iv’s other sculptural works in Kyiv, such as “Camomile” near the Dniprovsky Registry Office and a monument to the ant in the park near Ukraina movie theater. Incidentally, the sculptor dedicated a more than two meters tall 200-kg bronze ant to the best features of the Ukrainian national character. In Iv’s view, every Ukrainian is an ant to some extent. The master thinks that, like this insect, our man is strong, industrious, endowed with intellect, and, if necessary, he can defend, together with his comrades, his dwelling from even a big predator.
All these street sculptures, which are favorite photography places now, have emerged thanks to the Kiev Fashion Park project. While earlier such nice figurines as “Little Horse,” “Ballerina,” and “Lamps in Love,” could only be seen in downtown Kyiv, activists have been working in the past three years to “populate” the city’s remoter areas.
“Just a month ago, the Dnipro riverfront saw the unveiling of Vasyl Tatarsky’s sculpture ‘Apple,’” Kiev Fashion Park project manager Olena Zubkova says. “Today, our Ukrainian artists and we are generating and gathering the ideas of new gifts to the city. As for what these gifts will be like and in which of Kyiv public gardens they will appear, let it remain a surprise.”
