DATE & TIME: Monday, 27 Jan 2020, 7pm
VENUE: 79 Holland Park, London
Admission: Tickets £10, £7 concessions. Book via Eventbrite.
Nikita Kadan is one of Ukraine’s most vocal and articulate contemporary artists in Ukraine. He is part of a collective of six artists known as “REP” – “Революційно-експериментальний простір» («Revolutionary Experimental Space”) founded in 2004, which has led a number of artistic interventions, promoted civic activism in the field of arts education, took a critical stance against the policies of “de-communisation” and state censorship of the arts. In his public interviews, Nikita has often described the Ukrainian art scene as deeply provincial, with its actors preoccupied with their “petty dealings and relationships” rather than engaging in an open debate about the role of arts in bettering society.
Nikita will reflect on how Ukraine’s arts scene has evolved between the two Maidan Uprisings in 2004 and 2013-14 and beyond. He will offer a short overview of the REP. projects and the ideas and responses it generates. He will also reflect on his most recent project, known as “Kmytiv phenomenon” – a project profiling Ukrainian contemporary art in the local art museum in the village of Kmytiv of the Zhytomyr region, one of the few village museums in Ukraine, holding a large collection of the Soviet period. The Kmytiv project, along with many other works by Nikita Kadan and the REP group, reflects the trend of “new archivism” in Ukrainian contemporary art whereby artists actively engage with and contest the past and the official discourses of memory.
Nikita Kadan is also a member of a group of curators known as “Khudrada”. In 2011, he was awarded the top prize of Pinchuk Art Centre. In 2014, he received the Future Generation Art Prize. His works featured as part of Ukraine Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. His work “Unnamed” reflecting on the roots of mass violence in Ukraine in 1930-1940s will be dispayed in the course of the panel discussion “Ukraine: Holocaust and Memory” held in London a day before, on 26 January 2020.