Recycled Lenin #26 (2026) Original Mixed-media Sculpture by Oleksandr Balbyshev

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About the artwork

Recycled Lenin #25 reclaims a Soviet-era porcelain bust of Vladimir Lenin and transforms it through a dense constellation of vivid, hand-painted forms. By covering the sculpture’s severe and authoritative image with playful color, I disrupt the visual language of propaganda and strip the object of its original ideological authority. What once projected certainty, discipline, and control becomes fragmented, vulnerable, and open to reinterpretation.

For Ukrainians like myself, Lenin is inseparable from the history of Soviet occupation, repression, and the attempted erasure of national identity. His image was reproduced for decades as a symbol of unquestionable power, embedded into everyday life through statues, portraits, and political ritual. Although many Soviet symbols have disappeared from public space, the legacy of imperial violence and authoritarian thinking continues to shape the present. Through this work, I confront that history not by preserving the symbol intact, but by transforming it into something unstable and deeply personal.

The colorful marks function simultaneously as camouflage, contamination, celebration, and healing. They obscure the dictator’s gaze while exposing the fragility of the myth surrounding him. I am interested in the tension between visual pleasure and historical trauma — how bright color and playful abstraction can become tools of resistance against systems once designed to suppress individuality and freedom.

By repainting a found Soviet object by hand, I symbolically reclaim ownership over a painful historical narrative. In this series, recycling becomes both a political and personal act: a way of converting relics of oppression into contemporary objects that speak about memory, resilience, and liberation. Through art, I seek to neutralize the power these symbols once carried and transform them into spaces for reflection rather than obedience.

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Materials used:

Oil on the found porcelain bust

Details:

• Mixed-media sculpture on Other
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 15 x 18.5 x 8cm
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Urban and Pop
• Subject: People and portraits