Lenin to Arin is no longer a dictator, nor a theorist. He has become an inhabitant of the landscape, a mute and somewhat absurd witness to the passing of the seasons. His loneliness is total, and yet he seems to watch over these mountains with a derisory solemnity, surrounded by the silence of the wind and the smell of dry grass. Lenin still holds his roll of paper tightly against him, but today, his only audience is a pile of meticulously stacked hay bales
I look at what he looks at. Down below, in the valley, life continues its slow course, indifferent to the ideologies that once shaped it. I see the metal roofs that shine, the power lines that cut out the sky, and I feel this quiet indifference of the earth. Ideologies pass, empires collapse, but the hay must be in before winter. It is this temporality, that of the seasons and survival, which always ends up winning.
The contrast is striking. The imperial and rigid stature of the stone costume. Around him, rural Armenia extends in shades of ochre and beige. I feel tiny under a huge sky that seems to want to crush the verticality of the monument.
