Alexander Shaburov's "Monument to an Invisible Man", 1999

Shaburov's monument to an invisible man was made in collaboration with the writer Evgenii Kasimov in honor of H.G. Wells' canonical character. The project was funded by Marat Guelman, with Kasimov contributing the left foot imprint and Shaburov responsible for the labor of creating the sculpture and the right foot imprint. Although Shaburov is perhaps the only well-known artist to create such a monument, sculptures dedicated to fictional characters, and the invisible man specifically, proliferated in the 1990s as a widespead ironic game with the legacy of Soviet monuments, which by-and-large disappeared during the 1990s, removed, dismantled or rarely displaced to museums. The heroic Soviet statue disappeared but its absence is marked by statues such as the "Monument to an Invisible Man", which both lament and mock the void left behind.