"Want it like Michelangelo? Give me a tidy sum and a year to spare!" Sculptor uses angle grinder on scandalous monument in Bykhaw, but his orders are already on hold

The STV TV channel broadcast a report from Bykhaw, where 45-year-old Mahiliow sculptor Alyaksandr Minkou is reworking his sculpture "To the Mother Woman" using an angle grinder and a hammer. As we wrote earlier, the monument dedicated to the Year of the Belarusian Woman was officially unveiled in a local park in early November, but due to abnormal proportions and a distorted face, it instantly became an object of ridicule and memes on social media.

Now the stone woman's face is crisscrossed with red marker guidelines, and the master himself is carving it anew with an angle grinder under a canopy.

The sculptor, who has been in the profession for over 15 years and has created about 40 works, told journalists that within just 24 hours of the scandal, three thousand people followed his account.

"Just yesterday, an acquaintance of mine even asked 'Alisa' right in front of me. And there she told him what Alyaksandr Minkou became famous for — a scandalous sculpture," the artist recounted with a laugh in the report, showing a video by one of his critics on his smartphone: "'A butter-fingered sculptor' — I look, there's this woman, and she's already on my friends list."

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"Impossible to make a neck," and Michelangelo's work was criticized too

In a conversation with an STV correspondent, Minkou tried to explain the anatomical quirks of the sculpture, particularly the total lack of a neck and an inexplicable second braid down the back, which commenters dubbed "the spare."

"Well, I ran a braid down there, split it into two: directed one braid here, the second one there. And hair formed here because of that braid. That's why it's impossible to make a neck there. And then it turned out that I increased the tilt a bit, and straight-on it looks as if it's stuck on. From other angles, it looks normal," the master explained.

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He also commented on the massive lower portion of the figures, which he carved out of a seven-ton granite block, chipping away five tons of stone by hand: "You can't even get in there at all! I spent about two weeks gnawing all this away with a small grinder. Because it's, well, unrealistic — this skirt gets in the way here. Experienced sculptors understand all this, how much work went into it."

According to Minkou, the original version of the monument suited him completely, as the commission was on the level of a quick plein-air piece without academic refinement. Earlier in social media comments, the author claimed that he worked for free, and that all the allocated money went toward materials and taxes.

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On television, he once again reiterated the point about a gift to the city and compared his situation to the biographies of Renaissance titans:

"I was even very surprised that there was such a backlash. Like, it's such casual, unpretentious work, not done for money — meaning I made a gift, and here, it turns out, everyone has suddenly become such principled experts.

Well, if you want academic art — give me a tidy sum and a year to spare, and you'll get any masterpiece like Michelangelo made. And Michelangelo too, by the way, with his work that he spent five years on, 'David' — there were also plenty of dissatisfied people!"

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In the comments under the report published on social media, viewers immediately pointed out both the contradictions in his statements about money and the behavior of the author himself.

"He's still laughing and making excuses; sometimes it's better to chew than to talk. Like, 'I gave it as a gift,' and in every interview emphasizing that he wasn't paid money for it — here, choke on it," wrote one commenter.

Officials noticed the issue "during the unveiling"

Special attention in the report was given to how such an object ended up in the city park in the first place. Lyudmila Kechyk, head of the culture sector of the Bykhaw District Executive Committee, formulated the local authorities' position as follows:

"During the unveiling, a discrepancy was established between the actual execution of the artwork and the draft design. Currently, the author is carrying out work to revise the sculpture in order to bring it into compliance with the sketch."

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The official thereby effectively confirmed what the Deputy Chairman of the Bykhaw District Executive Committee, Alyaksandr Saksonau, had earlier let slip in a conversation with a journalist: no preliminary inspection of the monument had been conducted in Bykhaw before the sheet was pulled off it to music in front of schoolchildren.

Meanwhile, as we examined in detail earlier, according to Council of Ministers Resolution No. 218 adopted in May 2026, any outdoor sculpture in Belarus must undergo mandatory oversight by an artistic and expert council across four stages — from the sketch and working model to the finished work in the actual material before its installation. The law explicitly forbids the installation of works that deviate from the design sketch or lack artistic merit.

Cooperation with the sculptor put on hold

To evaluate the Bykhaw sculpture, STV journalists consulted Khizri Asadulaev, People's Artist of Dagestan and member of the Belarusian Union of Artists, who has lived and worked in Minsk for over 40 years. The expert acknowledged the obvious defects, but placed the primary responsibility on local officials:

"I examined this sculpture. Yes, indeed, the work is unfinished; the work was completed in a rush.

Although I know his works, Minkou's — back when he sculpted large statues for Vitsebsk at the sculpture studio, he had completely normal works, otherwise he wouldn't have been admitted to the Union of Artists.

And here I see that certain conditions, certain circumstances got in his way. I would be more critical of the clients, the officials in charge who allowed this, who installed it."

For Alyaksandr Minkou himself, who this autumn managed to install two other monuments in the Mahiliow region besides the one in Bykhaw — the plastic "Ales and Alesya" in Kastsyukovichy and a bronze bust of pig farmer Nina Baranova in Haradzets near Shklou — the incident has resulted in professional consequences.

The future of the sculptor's other projects has been thrown into doubt: just days ago, he was informed that cooperation with him has been put on pause. The ultimate fate of the sawed-down Bykhaw statue is to be decided by a special commission.

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