Zhanna Kadyrova
Second Hand
Artist
Zhanna Kadyrova
(1981, Brovary), Ukrainian
Original Title
Second Hand
Date2017
Mediumcollected ceramics, wood, cement
Dimensions74 × 46,5 × 2 cm
Classificationssculpture
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionZhanna Kadyrova’s artistic practice encompasses photography, video, sculpture, performance, installation, and experimentation. Kadyrová thematizes the social and cultural context of post-Soviet Ukraine, working with found objects and materials for which she finds new purposes, thus giving them a new life. She often uses decorative elements and construction materials such as mosaics, concrete, and cement. The mediums she works with reference their histories as ideological art forms during the Soviet era and their decorative function following Ukraine’s independence. She also indirectly draws on the Soviet tradition of embellishing public spaces, which, apart from their decorative dimension, also served an ideological purpose. Mosaics often adorned the monumental concrete spaces of Soviet buildings, explicitly manifesting their link to the regime’s propaganda. These spaces have now lost their original function and are often abandoned and irreversibly deteriorating. The ceramic mosaics decorating them have paradoxically proven more durable than the architecture they served. Their surprising durability stems from the use of enamel, which is no longer produced in Ukraine, making the mosaics a memorial to the powerful industry of Soviet times. The industrially produced tiles gradually became a mainstay of Kadyrova’s artistic expression, their original decorative value translated into high art as a metaphor of everydayness.
Works from Kadyrova’s Second Hand series (2017) are created using authentic tiles and decorative patterns from the Soviet era. The pieces resemble clothes on coat hangers and represent an innovative fusion of painting and sculpture. The ceramic tiles used in Second Hand are sourced from Damitsa, an old silk factory, and from a factory in Kiev where movies were copied for the entirety of the Soviet Union, apart from Russia. Both Soviet factories were monumental spaces combining labor and entertainment, and both dilapidated and were eventually torn down and replaced by housing developments with shopping and entertainment centers. Second Hand preserves a memory of past times while simultaneously conveying the significant transformation which took place in the past decades and engaging with the problems it has brought. The works suggest that the former era which they reference may have been more oriented toward topics such as the revitalization of the workspace and interpersonal relationships than today’s climate which seems to prioritize profit over such values.
Zhanna Kadyrova (*1981, Brovary) studied at the Taras Shevchenko State Art School. In 2011, she received a special prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre. In April 2012, her work Form of Light won the Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Award in the category of public art. In December of the same year, she was awarded the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award. In 2013, she won the main prize of the PinchukArtCentre. Kadyrova regularly displays at international exhibitions such as the 5th Moscow Biennale, the 55th Venice Biennale (as part of the Ukrainian pavilion), the Nouvelles Vagues at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2013), the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, and the May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff at the 58th Venice Biennale. She is also a founding member of the art group R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) and the punk groups Pinoplast, 8=8, The Conquered City and The City of Winners.
Works from Kadyrova’s Second Hand series (2017) are created using authentic tiles and decorative patterns from the Soviet era. The pieces resemble clothes on coat hangers and represent an innovative fusion of painting and sculpture. The ceramic tiles used in Second Hand are sourced from Damitsa, an old silk factory, and from a factory in Kiev where movies were copied for the entirety of the Soviet Union, apart from Russia. Both Soviet factories were monumental spaces combining labor and entertainment, and both dilapidated and were eventually torn down and replaced by housing developments with shopping and entertainment centers. Second Hand preserves a memory of past times while simultaneously conveying the significant transformation which took place in the past decades and engaging with the problems it has brought. The works suggest that the former era which they reference may have been more oriented toward topics such as the revitalization of the workspace and interpersonal relationships than today’s climate which seems to prioritize profit over such values.
Zhanna Kadyrova (*1981, Brovary) studied at the Taras Shevchenko State Art School. In 2011, she received a special prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre. In April 2012, her work Form of Light won the Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Award in the category of public art. In December of the same year, she was awarded the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award. In 2013, she won the main prize of the PinchukArtCentre. Kadyrova regularly displays at international exhibitions such as the 5th Moscow Biennale, the 55th Venice Biennale (as part of the Ukrainian pavilion), the Nouvelles Vagues at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2013), the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, and the May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff at the 58th Venice Biennale. She is also a founding member of the art group R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) and the punk groups Pinoplast, 8=8, The Conquered City and The City of Winners.
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