Photographic print and coal
51,6 x 41,6 x 9.7 cm (framed)


Through this photograph, half-buried under charcoal from the Donbas mining region, Nikita Kadan examines the link between communist societies and their archives. This image comes from a 1970s book that presented and highlighted the local modernity of Donetsk, Ukraine, now located in the war zone. Through this process, Nikita Kadan reveals the paradoxes and contradictions of the Soviet regime on the notion of progress, by confronting images of the communist past, with historical context, to a simple and homogeneous material from the local land of Donbas, actually located in the heart of the Ukrainian conflict.

The work of Nikita Kadan (born in 1982 in Kyiv) centers on his artistic exploration of post-communist social and political developments and their origins and causes in the Soviet system. The artist is a sensitive and critical observer and interpreter of historical shifts and the connections and continuities between the communist past and turbo-capitalist present. As a significant figure in the Ukrainian art scene, Nikita Kadan has become the voice and witness of the Ukrainian situation since the beginning of the war provoked by the Russian forces in March 2022. Nikita Kadan is a member of the artist group R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) since 2004 and co-founder and member of the curatorial group and activities HUDRADA since 2008. He graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Kyiv, where he studied monumental painting; he now works with installation, graphic design, painting, wall drawings, and posters in the city, sometimes in interdisciplinary collaboration with architects, human rights activists, and sociologists.