Christmas: snow postcards from Siberia
Residents of the region remember "Uncle Valerius," the artist who traced drawings and greetings on ice and snowy expanses. He died last year of Covid. Beloved throughout Russia, his works also photographed by the International Space Station.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Russians of Siberia, and also of other regions, have organized a special "flashmob" to honor the memory of Valerij Melnikov. Known as "Uncle Valerius" of the village of Markovo, in the Priamurje region (eastern Manchuria) on the Russian side of the Amur River, he traced drawings and written greetings on the ice and snowy expanses. With the help of spades, pickaxes and other tools, many people of different ages and backgrounds take to the snowy landscapes to imitate ice art in the period heralding the New Year and Christmas holidays (Christmas in Russia is celebrated after New Year's Day, on January 7).
For more than 10 years after his retirement, Uncle Valerius devoted himself in solitude to compose greetings for his fellow citizens of Priamurje, drawing festive writings and images on the frozen surface of the great river that separates Russia from China and Mongolia, and on many other snowy spaces. The International Space Station photographed its own New Year's card drawn on the Khomutin River in 2017.
Then the media began to write about the exploits of Uncle Valerius, who quickly became a celebrity throughout the country for this unique form of art capable of making kind and welcoming even the most hostile landscape of winter frosts. Groups of tourists from various cities began to visit Markovo, and on New Year's Eve greeting cards from all over Russia arrived for Uncle Valerius.
Uncle Valerius died in 2020, killed by the coronavirus at the age of 73, after working as a technician in a factory and a trader. Over 20 years ago, due to meningitis followed by a heart attack, he lost his hearing. As he himself said in interviews, he was in a coma for 10 days: as soon as he woke up, he asked to turn on the radio, but without hearing any sound. In the solitude of silence he started to compose drawings on snow and ice - different every year - to feel alive and "not to bore people".
In interviews, Valerius explained that he didn't like solitude: "It's like the howling of the Siberian wolf... they say that men don't cry, but it's not true. I am a person of company, in the collective I have always been a leader, but circumstances have made me live this experience; I don't want to think I am worthless, I want to be needed, otherwise why live?".
The idea of New Year's cards, Melnikov recounted, came to him out of the blue: he wanted to give people a reason to face the new year with optimism. Uncle Valerius had his own method of drawing, so the figures that were outlined had to freeze first, and then come to life with a work of at least a month, cleaning them every day from the snow that was deposited on them; a kind of "snow icon", to be composed with religious dedication.
In his memory the inhabitants of the Amur region joined in continuing the tradition of snow greetings, and they were joined by people from many cities of Siberia: Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Ekaterinburg, Omsk and Jakutsk. The event had its center precisely in Markovo, his native village.
Frozen postcards will be carved on the right bank of the Ob River, at the Europe-Asia bridge of the Ural River and on the banks of the Om and Iseti Rivers. In Jakutsk the greeting will be painted on Lake Talom. The first postcard in memory of Uncle Valerius is already ready in Blagoveščensk, where the collaborators of the social and cultural center of the city, Vitalij Guz and Stanislav Gavrik, prepared the greetings in the pond of the Friendship Park.
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02/01/2023 13:29
