No

Sculpture. 90 cm. Bronze with bismuth patina.
Figurines. 2000 pieces, height 8,5 cm. PVC. 2025

— Please tell me about the sculptures you create.

— The project is called "Expanded Memorial" because it spreads to the people. You can grab a figurine and take it to your home, office, or keep it in your pocket. There isn’t just Navalny — it’s a series of other characters. Recently, it’s been mostly women like, for instance, Celeste Caeiro who put flowers in soldiers’ rifles during Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in 1974. Simple, peaceful actions of people in the face of dictatorship or violence generate an image that triggers a different way of acting and thinking.

Fernando Sánchez Castillo

In Spain we are used to seeing representations of people with guns at war memorials instead of civilian figures who took peaceful action and had a positive influence on society. Toys for children are also very violent: soldiers, tanks.

As a kid I had a huge collection of these plastic figurines. There were animals as well. Back then I thought there was a modest artist behind these beautiful animals. He wasn’t able to build a monument, but could make a toy with which my imagination could create a different world. Now, I feel like I can do something similar but with other, more inspiring images.

— I remember your installation in Moscow dedicated to August Landmesser, a worker who kept his arms crossed while standing in a crowd where everyone was making a Nazi salute. But there was a requirement: you could only grab a figurine if you wrote something on a piece of paper and left it behind.

— It’s not a requirement, but rather an invitation. People are invited to leave a comment, a drawing or something that can be exchanged. They take an object, but also can leave an object. It’s an exercise in the freedom to write something — or not.

In Mexico, we created 18,000 figurines based on an archival photo of a student demonstration in 1968. It is estimated that more than 50,000 people have been disappeared for political reasons from 1968 to today. At first, people wouldn’t dare grab a figurine and take it home with them because they were so respectful of this monument. So I had to encourage them to take one. You are allowed to grab one, you’re allowed to write on a post-it, you’re allowed to stick it on the wall. You can, but you don’t have to.

— What is special about the new chapter dedicated to Navalny?

— Normally, I don’t work with recent events, but in the case of Navalny I can’t afford to wait 40 or 80 years.

Actually, every time I’ve been to Russia, I’ve loved it so much. I was impressed by how Russian society is so respectful of art and artists. Spain was very much linked to Russia and the Soviet Union during the Civil War. Many Spanish refugees, particularly kids, went there and were very well received. So, yeah, I wanted to be a part of that.

I love the stubbornness of those Russian people who think differently. I hope that this small memorial can spread like a tiny fire, creating peaceful fires in other people. I think the pose of this figurine is beautiful because it’s a guy sending out a heart to his wife or to the beloved people.

Fernando Sánchez Castillo is a Spanish artist who works with themes of history, memory and resistance. Born in Madrid in 1970, he studied Fine Arts at the Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad Complutense Madrid, and Philosophy at the Instituto de Estética Contemporánea, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Sánchez Castillo has had solo exhibitions in Spain, Mexico, Germany, Austria and other countries. His works are included in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Dutch Central Bank and other institutions.

Among Sánchez Castillo’s most famous projects is "Expanded Memorial", a series of interactive installations in which visitors can take home a small plastic figure of a protester or freedom fighter and leave a message in the exhibition space. Like collectible superhero figurines, these small sculptures help their owners express themselves, reminding them of how they see themselves — the emotional connection to them is stronger than to large street monuments.

In late 2021, months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow opened the exhibition "Diversity United", the last major international art exhibition before the country’s cultural isolation. One of the most memorable exhibits was Sánchez Castillo’s monument to August Landmesser, a German worker known from a historic photograph in which he is the only one in a crowd not raising his arm in a Nazi salute. At least two participants in the documentary part of the exhibition "No" took figurines of Landmesser with them into exile.

Specifically for the exhibition "No", Sánchez Castillo created a sculpture of the politician Alexei Navalny, who remained Vladimir Putin’s main opponent until he was killed in a Russian prison in 2024. The work is the first monument of its kind to Navalny.