Public services painted over the portrait of Daniil Kharms that graces the facade of house number 11 on Mayakovsky Street in St. Petersburg, a move reported by Fontanka. The decision sparked a conversation about art on public walls and the delicate balance between street expression and municipal ownership of urban spaces. The portrait, long a point of reference for passersby and locals, became a symbol of how a city negotiates memory, commemoration, and the everyday life of its streets.
In 2016, graffiti artists Pasha Kas and Pavel Mokich created a mural to mark the seventy-fourth anniversary of Kharms’s death. What began as a tribute soon became a legal standoff when authorities labeled the work unauthorized. The ensuing lawsuit stretched across almost five years, highlighting the friction between spontaneous public art and official property rules. On October 26, 2021, the Dzerzhinsky District Court ruled that a portrait of Kharms should be painted over in the same house where the writer had lived for nearly fifteen years before his arrest in 1941. The court’s decision underscored the complexity of preserving cultural symbols within a jurisdiction that manages architectural façades as state assets rather than purely narrative surfaces.
In February, activists communicated through the Central Zone for a Comfortable Living Environment group on VKontakte that the mural would be replaced by a light projection. They explained that there had been no legal means to preserve the mural in its painted form, emphasizing the procedural gaps that often accompany public art decisions in crowded urban spaces. The shift from pigment to light projection became a talking point about accessibility, visibility, and the evolving methods cities use to honor historical figures without permanently altering the built environment.
By 2021, a broad online petition on Change.org drew attention to the portrait’s fate, collecting tens of thousands of signatures in support of keeping the image intact. The appeal attracted endorsements from notable cultural figures, including the director of the Hermitage and a former regional governor, who publicly urged that the artwork be preserved. This groundswell illustrated how cultural memory—embodied in a single mural—can mobilize community engagement and defense of public art against administrative changes.
Against the idea of removing or replacing the graffiti, voices from urban design and architectural critique surfaced in dialogues that examined how such works contribute to the city’s character. Urbanists and specialists in architectural history discussed how murals can function as civic landmarks, offering residents a sense of continuity and a shared narrative. In this broader conversation, the portrait of Daniil Kharms was framed not only as a tribute to a writer but also as a case study in how cities decide what to keep, what to reframe, and what to reveal anew to future generations. The exchange underscored the tension between preserving past identities and embracing contemporary urban experimentation, a dynamic that defines modern city life.