Mayana Nasybullova works with famous symbols of Soviet past and modern Russia. By choosing significant objects, she’s researching mechanisms of memory and the phenomena of totemism - the way in which objects form the set we can find in every house.

The artist chooses “the artifacts” of the old and the new world, inspired by characters of modern “folk” trends in politics and mass culture. So, the duck refers to the anti-corruption movement of 2017, and the attribute of the Soviet childhood tumbler helps her to fit in the range of historical symbols. And alternatively – the duck makes actual the attribute of the state caused by the revolution. By gathering and combining old and new elements Nasybullova gives new life to symbols.

This work has no direct image of Lenin but “the revolutionary leader” circumstantially represented. “The duck-tumbler toy” consists of the symbols that has been transformed earlier. Mayana by herself calls the sculpture “Lenin-duck and Lenin-tumbler toy pledge of love left by them” and underlines that without previous experiments “Duck-tumbler toy” was impossible to invent. V