Plaster ghosts by Jakub Hadrava revive an abandoned church in the Czech village of Lukava

At one time I was surprised by the large number of abandoned churches in the Czech Republic. One fourteenth-century church, 200 km from Prague, had stood empty since 1968, when its roof collapsed and people were injured. That lasted until a young artist from the capital, Jakub Hadrava, took up the church's revival: the Church of Saint George in the village of Lukova. With the support of the local administration he built about 20 plaster statues, phantoms that breathed new life into the ancient walls. The eerie installation at once became a local landmark and very quickly raised more than 20 thousand dollars for the reconstruction of the roof, and for nine years now Hadrava's ghosts have remained a magnet for tourists from all over the country. Services are again held in the church, people gladly visit the renewed centre of spiritual life, and the real ghosts have found embodiment in plaster