On the Danube Quay in Budapest, a Russian soldier, machine gun at the ready, stands in front of an empty pantry. He is at most six inches tall, but that doesn’t make him any less evil: the face under the ushanka (Russian fur hat, red.) departed from hatred. Artist Mihály Kolodko (44) squats down and checks whether the cupboard door still works. There is a large letter ‘Z’ on the inside. The bronze squeaks a little. “I love this sound.” A young couple stops and takes pictures enthusiastically.
It is Kolodko’s latest creation, part of a series of mini statues that he has placed in every nook and cranny of Budapest in recent years. The artist, who moved from Ukraine to Hungary in 2016, does this without permission. ‘Guerrilla art’ according to admirers: a description that Kolodko can agree with. ‘Guerrilla artists are like partisans’, he says with a smile. He thinks it takes too long to get permission. Moreover, the works of art are so small that they fit everywhere.
It is one of the reasons why Kolodko, trained in sculpture at the Lviv Academy of Art, works precisely on this scale. ‘All squares and large places are already occupied.’ It’s also a lot cheaper. Smaller statues are also closer to the inhabitants of the Hungarian capital, says Kolodko. ‘Great monuments tower above you on their plinth, they are so far away from you.’ Another way to shorten the distance is humor. Kolodko’s work lacks the marble seriousness of long-dead men, his figurines are full of witticisms and references to popular culture.
His work is also influenced by current events. It has become more grim since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ‘It was impossible for me to work for the first few weeks,’ says Kolodko in his studio, a cellar in the Pest district. It’s a cozy underground space full of bronze statues, photos and clay models of work in progress. ‘The ideas I had and the images I was working on offered no comfort. What good is this to people, I wondered.’
A small but symbolic event in the war pulled Kolodko out of the pit. “I heard the story of a Ukrainian soldier on Snake Island saying, ‘Russian warship, fall dead.'” The incident took place on the first day of the war and quickly became legendary: the Ukrainian postal company even turned it into a popular postage stamp. Kolodko went to work madly and made a small warship with Putin’s head on it. He placed it on a stone post, which on closer inspection turns out to be a large middle finger. At the bottom you see the Ukrainian trident.
Kolodko prefers to speak Ukrainian, but is also fluent in Hungarian. “A present from my grandmother.” Kolodko’s grandmother belonged to the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, the artist grew up in western Uzhhorod. In 2016 he moved to Budapest, because the political tensions in his country became too much for him. He picks up a statuette from a shelf in his studio: a map of Ukraine, checkered like a chocolate bar. “It felt like everyone wanted to tear down a piece of my land.” Due to the Russian invasion, Ukraine is back in business.
The empty pantry with the evil soldier refers to a Hungarian cult film with the famous phrase: ‘The Russians are already in the pantry!’ That’s why the cupboard is empty, says Kolodko. “If you let them in, they’ll take everything.” Behind the soldier is a comfortable Hungarian chair, a reference to the way the Hungarian government rolls out the red carpet for Russian interests. Another thing that stands out about Kolodko’s most recent statues: they are one of the few critical commentaries on the war in the Hungarian public space.
We can expect more from that for the time being, as our visit to his studio in October shows. Kolodko shows his latest idea on his phone. A cutscene: black-and-white footage of a statue of Stalin in central Budapest, followed by what’s left of it after Hungarian insurgents pull it off its pedestal during the 1956 revolution – just two boots.
Kolodko is going to put two boots with protruding bones and a skateboard next to them on the spot where the statue of Stalin used to stand (on October 23, the day on which the Hungarian Uprising is commemorated, Kolodko placed the statue, red.). That Hungary is so pro-Russian when it unleashed a mass uprising against Russia nearly 70 years ago is a mystery to some. Kolodko has no answers either. ‘That’s something for journalists. I have my art.’
Like many artists, Kolodko is reluctant to interpret his work as something political. But with the war, politics stormed into his art unannounced in recent months. That changes not only his work, but also himself, says Kolodko on the Liberty Bridge over the Danube, where one of his oldest statues hangs: a roguish Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph I in a hammock.
‘Looking back at my work over the past few years, I sometimes find it childish, too entertaining. The war in Ukraine is about very fundamental issues: the desire for independence and the struggle for freedom. That fire burns in my soul too.’ Despite the seriousness of the situation, humor remains important. Back in the studio, another idea is waiting: a large mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. On top of the cloud is a blissful Putin making snow angels.
Wandering for hours for the perfect place
There are about thirty mini statues of Kolodko in Budapest. He always works on several projects at the same time, says the artist. ‘Some ideas I walk around for weeks at first.’ Then suddenly, like a camera lens focusing, an idea takes shape and he gets to work. But he won’t complete the statue until he has found the perfect spot in the streets of Budapest. ‘Sometimes I wander through the city for hours looking for the right location.’ His work can also be followed on Instagram.