Lyuda Kalinichenko
Индустриальный младенец
Скульптура создана в составе арт-группы ЛККЛ (Людмила Калиниченко/Ксения Ларина) для фестиваля уличного искусства ЧӦ
Industrial Baby, Vizovsky Pond, Yekaterinburg. Photo courtesy of ChӦ Public Art Festival
The work reflects on the industrial history of the Urals, where factories, water, labour and landscape are deeply connected. Emerging from the context of a former industrial district, the baby becomes an image of birth, transformation and possible futures.
The sculpture Industrial Baby by LKKL art group (Lyuda Kalinichenko & Ksenia Larina) was conceived for the third edition of ChÖ Public Art Festival. Installed on Vizovsky Pond in Yekaterinburg, the work takes the form of a sleeping baby’s head cast from recycled aluminium alloy. The sculpture is approximately 3 metres high and weighs over one tonne.
Sketches for Industrial Baby, 2019, Lyuda Kalinichenko
"When the idea for Industrial Baby first came to me in 2019, technology was already playing a direct role in my work.
I was looking at industrial quarries through satellite images: some were flooded with water, while others were still active. To me, they appeared both as man-made craters and as cradles — almost womb-like forms within the landscape.
On the one hand, industrialisation is a cyclical process of extraction. It is machine-like in its nature and constantly demands human and natural resources. On the other hand, new and inevitable relationships begin to emerge between bodies, machines, technologies, landscapes, water and time. I wanted to rethink this tension.
This is how the idea of a sleeping baby in an industrial landscape began. These crater-cradles looked like wounds in the earth, and I wanted to fill these wounds with life. This is how I became the mother of Industrial Baby."
— Lyudmila Kalinichenko
Special thanks to the ChÖ Public Art Festival team, Intermold, the TR team, Ksenia, Nikita, Ilya and Sasha