Leninmonument 13 april 1917

One day in April 1917, the Russian Marxist and politician, later despot Vladimir Lenin had a pitstop in Stockholm on his way to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg). The Tsar empire was tottering, the First World War was raging, and a Russian revolution was on the horizon. Lenin is featured in a press photograph from Vasagatan, marked with an X. Cobblestones, a piece of tram rail and the X were used by Björn Lövin to make a kind of monument.　

The work is not a tribute to a person or a deed, as is often the case with monuments. Instead, it raises questions of what and how we remember, or want to remember, collectively. It was originally made as one of six "environments" for the exhibition "Memory Fails" at Kulturhuset.

Lövin worked conceptually to create multifaceted works that address politics, history, economy and society. What the monument actually commemorates is unclear. The main person is absent from Lövin’s work. Its meaning seems to be open and with no definite direction. This conceptual portrayal of a moment is rather an anti-monument, that instead explores the notion of the historical monument as a form.