#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. By autumn in Norilsk, the ARcTica street art gallery will be replenished with new art facades. The creative project of the Norilsk Development Agency which is supported by the Nornickel company and the municipality, has been working for the third year already.
“ARcTica has already presented the city with eight art facades. Reindeer and a she-bear with a teddy bear ate decorating the entrance group to the Central District from the airport, there is an owl at the end of the house in Kayerkan along Norilskaya street. The courtyard of the Youth Center is decorated with Successful Goal picture and at the exit towards the bakery, there is now a ‘piece of Greece’ – a mural depicting the head of one of the goddesses”, the NDA recalled.
Last year, ARcTica artists worked in the 3D technique. Thanks to them, the city was decorated with balloons, an airship and a rover. This year, the Norilsk Street Art Gallery will immortalize the stories of the townspeople who were born in the maternity hospital at 18 Bohdan Hmelnitsky street.
The former Norilsk maternity hospital is a significant place for many local residents. It worked for 50 years: from 1968 to 2018. Happy fathers often wrote declarations of love on the facades of houses opposite the windows of women in labor. However, in order to save fresh repairs, the restored facade opposite the maternity house had to be ‘decorated’ with video surveillance cameras.
“We at the Norilsk Development Agency believe that expressing good feelings is great. We are also in favor of making the facades of Norilsk houses beautiful and neat. The area around the former maternity hospital will be associated with fond memories and stories of family replenishment for a long time. We want to show Norilsk how much happiness has happened in the maternity hospital for 50 years, and we ask the townspeople to share their stories”, the NDA employees addressed the Norilsk residents.
If you were born in the maternity hospital on Bohdan Hmelnitsky street, talk to moms and dads, find out the story of your birth and send it by July 1, 2021 to e-mail: arnteam@arnorilsk.ru. Here are examples of stories:
• “I got my first passport when I was five days old. It was a Newborn Norilsk citizen’s passport”;
• “I was born during a serious accident on heating systems, but did not feel the cold – all the days in the hospital my mother kept me warm, holding me to her chest”;
• “Mom called me the Sun Bunny – the sun returned to the city on my birthday”;
• “Mom kept thinking about what name I would get, and grandfather, without consulting anyone, just sent a note to the hospital: “How is our Katyushka?”;
• “I spent seven days in the hospital. Mom called me “my week”;
• “I was born in this hospital, 20 minutes later my brother was born here”.
“50 stories that will inspire artists will appear in the form of painted collages on the ends of houses opposite the former maternity hospital, where for many years newly minted dads wrote words of gratitude to mothers who gave birth to their children”, they told about their plans in the NDA.
The Spectrum team will create murals. Artists from Yekaterinburg and Moscow will be working on new art facades, which will appear by autumn.
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Text: Angelica Stepanova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko and open sources
