Children_Are_the_Victims_of_Adult_Vices
Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices
Sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin
Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices is a group of bronze sculptures created by Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin. The sculptures are located in a park in Bolotnaya Square, Balchug, 2,000 feet (610 metres) south of the Moscow Kremlin behind the British Ambassador's residence.[1]
The monument consists of 15 sculptures. In the center of the composition are two blindfolded children. At their feet are two books: Russian Tales and Alexander Pushkin’s Fairy Tales, as well as a globe. The figures of children are surrounded by sculptures in the form of anthropomorphic monsters, personifying "adult" vices:
- Drug addiction – depicted as a bald man with bent wings offering a syringe.
- Prostitution – depicted as a woman with the head of a frog.
- Theft – depicted as a man with a boar's head, carrying away a bag of money.
- Alcoholism – depicted as Bacchus holding a goblet.
- Ignorance – depicted as a donkey holding a rattle in his hands.
- Pseudo-science is depicted as a caricature of Themis with a helmet over her eyes, a scroll with an alchemical tree, and a two-headed puppet.
- Propaganda of violence is depicted as an arms dealer.
- Sadism is depicted as a cassocked figure with a rhinoceros head.
- An empty pillory represents the forgotten victims of repression.
- The exploitation of child labor – depicted as a factory owner with the head of a bird.
- Poverty – depicted as an old woman begging for alms.
- War - a figure of a knight in armor, with bent wings and a gas mask resembling a character from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, holding a bomb with the head of Mickey Mouse. The wings are the same as those of the Addiction figure, giving the composition symmetry.
- Indifference stands in the center of the composition and is shown as a many-armed figure, both deaf and unseeing.[2]
The sculpture was commissioned by then-Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and sponsored by the state-owned oil company Rosneft. It was unveiled in 2001 amid some controversy. Some Muscovites worried that the graphic imagery would frighten children.[2][3] Chemiakin said that, "[The sculpture] ... was conceived and carried out by me as a symbol and a call to fight for the salvation of present and future generations."[4]
