Any victim of lost love, childhood nostalgia, or unfulfilled dreams can attest to sweetness of the past’s lilting siren song. However, reality belongs to those who fearlessly turn their gaze towards the future. True, every work completed by an artist progresses their story forward, but it can only occasionally be said that an artist’s work also addresses the future of the place in which it is created. Such is the case for “Monument to Belarus Futurism” a mural recently completed by Australian artist Fintan Magee in the city of Minsk, Belarus.
For the famed artist’s first piece in this Central European country, Magee sought to understand the intricacies of Minks’s past, present and future. Immediately upon his arrival, Magee attended a historical tour and subsequently found himself intrigued by Belarus’s promising future as a leading force in the international information technology sector.
The Official Website of the Republic of Belarus states that “Belarus is building a reputation as an international information technology hub to rival India and China.” The site continues to explain that this burgeoning success can be attributed to “its highly skilled workforce, low labour costs and close proximity to its markets in Europe and the USA.” In addition to the recent creation of the country’s High Technology Park, built to “foster innovative, rapidly-growing and fast-moving technology firms,” the country is also taking further measures “to add biotechnology, nanotechnology and green technology” to the Park’s corporate activities.
Magee became enamored of the country’s efforts, enchanted with “the fact that the young people of a small country in the center of Europe look for their future in new technologies, not restricting themselves to folklore.”
The mural’s scale suits its symbolic importance. It is painted upon the 12 story facade of a “Soviet built apartment block in the suburbs of Minsk” in only nine days, and looms with the overarching influence of a nation’s future on the horizon. Still, Magee pays homage to Belarus’s past, incorporating the works of three of its own artists into the mural. Each artist hails “from different generations in important periods of Belrussian history.” They include Yazep Drazdovich, “one of the founders of Belarussian modern art,” Alexander Kischenko, a “Soviet era muralist and mosaic artist,” and Pavel Voinitski, a sculptor who created the noted piece “Road to the Future.”
Magee notes that each of these artists “created work aimed at depicting, imagining and shaping the future.” Their influence in the piece is subtle, yet present. Drazdovich’s work, completed in the first half of the twentieth century, most closely resembles Magee’s personal artistic style, with its dreamy interpretation of real-life figures. His influence can also be felt in the misty background shown in the silhouette cutout from the background of the “12-year-old boy from Minsk” depicted in Magee’s mural. Kischenko, active in the second half of the twentieth century, can be found in the more impressionistic aspects of the mural. Finally, Voinitski, an artist of contemporary repute, is most obviously felt in the “robot-bird-like figure” held by the work’s central figure. In choosing to honor these particular legacies, Magee effectively bridges the gap between what has happened and what could happen in this blossoming nation.
Magee completed the mural for the Urban Myths project, an “interactive street art project” hosted in Belarus. “Urban Myths” encourages participating artists to find inspiriting in their interactions with local people, and tasks them with “trying to reflect upon the past and present of the country in their artistic endeavors.” To this end, Magee’s latest work absolutely lives up to its desired mission, all the while proving another successful step in his own artistic journey.
Fintan Magee: web | facebook | instagram
Urban Myth: facebook | instagram
