Pedestal is Meldibekov’s response to the contested site of Alto Square in central Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where an actual pedestal was built in 1984 to display a monument of Lenin. The pedestal became a marker for Kyrgyzstan’s unstable political situation: the country underwent two revolutions, in 2005 and 2015, after each of which the winning party installed a new sculpture to promote its political ideology; each time, the monument increased in size and grandeur. Meldibekov’s version humorously incorporates all of the architectural features that have been imposed upon the pedestal.

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