Budapest Statue Park
Budapest Statue Park
The Park of Statues, installed in the suburbs of Budapest, has been presenting since August 1995 a collection of monumental statues, formerly placed in the public places of Budapest according to the instructions and needs of the communist policy.
Totalitarian regimes have always attached importance to dominating and controlling the image of their territories and of the life of their subjects in a total way. For this purpose, one of the best ways is to control history and memory, that is, the past..
Too often history was manipulated, rewritten so as to legitimate existing power and to give it an image that wanted to be positive, while destroying the other history, erasing any trace of a dissenting memory parallel with the official one. In order to exert this absolute control on collective memory, it was forbidden to remember and commemorate anything other than this official memory: “the ideologists of the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe (…) tried to throw a black veil on history, so that the present time of socialism can take more glare” (Miklós Sulyok).
The statues that populate the Park today give a significant account of this control of the state party under Soviet domination. They were then “instruments intended to destroy memory” (Miklós Sulyok), evidence of the power and omnipotence of the State, which daily reminded the population which memory was to be imprinted on their spirit.
The years 1989-1990 brought about deep changes in Hungary and in the Eastern European countries in general. Once these countries were liberated from the Soviet communist yoke, political changes came in opposition to this over-controlled past. It is thus quite natural that at this time the question arose about the future of the many statues that decorated public spaces, statues glorifying a past that wanted from then on to be over. How could they acquire neutral status when their symbolism was their reason to exist some time before? Moreover, the prolonged presence of these statues in public spaces proved to be unthinkable and unbearable: “a great number of people reacted instinctively with hatred and demanded their destruction. Others wished that they be destroyed and disfigured even as they are exposed.”
Others thought that they had lost their significance with the fall of the Soviet block and that they could thus remain in their place without offending any sensitivity. Between these two extreme solutions, the first consisting in treating in a totalitarian way the totalitarianism which one fights by erasing a side of memory, the other in vulgarising totalitarian acts and risking a not less dangerous forgetfulness, a third original way was found, enabling a necessary work of memory.
The solution that was chosen consisted in using these statues as testimony and in appealing to reflection while placing them together in a common place of memory, that of the pangs of totalitarianism as regards denial, deconstruction and rebuilding of memory.
Having chosen this latter solution, the Cultural Committee of the Municipal Council of Budapest launched an invitation to architects for the realisation of a project relating to the setup of a park to accommodate the dismounted statues. It was the project of Ákos Eleőd, member of the Architecture Studio “Vadász és Társai”, which was retained. This architect created a jewellery case space appropriate for this specific subject, thanks to a generous and spirited interpretation that answered society’s expectations.
