D.C. artist floats pro-Ukraine message above local statues
“That’s a good one,” Kelner says after tying the balloons in place. “This is it. This is good stuff. I need the lower balloon off of Walter’s face.”“That’s what I’m working for,” Kelner says. “I want blue over and yellow under. I should shut up and take some pictures.”Kelner committed his first “balloon action” the opening week of the war, tying balloons to the statue of Russian writer“Pushkin is the writer I believe to be most significant to the idea of what Russian identity is,” he says.
Russian identity is something Kelner thinks about a lot. He describes himself as “conceived in Russia and born in the United States.” His parents left Moscow in 1974, arriving in Cleveland as Jewish refugees. By 1976, they had settled in Washington, his mother to work at National Institutes of Health, his father at the Voice of America.
In Russia, Kelner says, “My parents experienced the same kind of aggression that the world is seeing now.” Much of Kelner’s art explores the dichotomies of the immigrant child. Some of his work subverts Soviet propaganda, grafting it with American consumerism: Colonel Sanders in Red Army epaulets, a logo for “Stalinbucks” coffee.After accessorizing the Pushkin statue, Kelner embarked on other balloon actions, one a month over the first year of the war:
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