The Siren’s Song, galerie Transit, March & April 2024
Begijnhofkerk Mechelen, December 2023 Tryvoha [the Sirens and the Mast]
Venice Biennial 2022
Difficulties of Profanation II, 2022, steel, white marmor, remnants of war, postcards, 4 x 4 x 8 meter, Grande Scuola della Misericordia, Ukrainian Pavillion @ Venice Biennial 2022
Children Are Surrounded by Art, 2021, galerie Transit Mechelen
The Beautiful Colonizer, 2020, galerie Transit Mechelen
Kisterem Gallery Budapest, September 2019
High Disease, galerie Transit, november-december 2017
Gazelka, galerie Transit, september-oktober 2015
Kunsthaus Zurich, Europa, Die Zukunft der Geschichte, 12.6 – 6.9.2015
Venice Biennial, 2015
Difficulties of Profanation Ukrainian Pavillion @ Venice Biennial 2015 A traditional showcase, in its form and material referring to showcases from the Soviet Union, accumulates materials that Nikita Kadan has collected in eastern Ukraine during the war. The rubble inside reveals political narratives with a striking truthfulness: these destroyed artefacts are containers of words, of images and memories that narrate a (present) history. Thus the sculpture deals with the institutionalization of memories, the role of local heritage in forming a historical understanding against the cultural amnesia resulting from the conflicts. The showcase itself, in opposition to the rubble it collects, addresses Ukraine’s Soviet past, a part of history that is rather readily forgotten. It places the current conflict in a historical framework and presents the war as an extension of an established conflict of ideologies. In between the rubble, inside the showcase, grows a bean plant that over time will cover the destroyed artefacts. It transforms the sculpture into a greenhouse, referring to popular gardens that appeared throughout the conflict, starting on the occupation of Maidan Square and continuing to the warzone in Dombass. These gardens suggest hope, a new start, a future life and process of reconciliation.
Exhibition view Engineering Hope in Art Brussels 2014, boot Transit Gallery
Small House of Giants | Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbane, Lyon | Rendez-Vous 13
“Small house of giants“, found object, wood, metal, gypsum, paint, 2012 produced with support of PinchukArtCentre 2012 & IAC, Villeurbane Lyon 2013
“Small house of giants” is a combined object, kind of architectural collage, which’s parts are living container for builders from 1970s and a model of facade of geometric form referring to Soviet neo-modernist architecture of the same period. “Small house of giants” is a reflection on the shifting social role of the worker within the new capitalist environment in Ukraine. On the other hand this object opens a critical discourse on the fictive heroical position that workers held in the Soviet past.
Photo’s copyright Bert de Leenheer
Yesterday, Today, Today, 2012 in galerie Transit Mechelen
Surfaces | Monument, 70 x 100 cm, 2013, drawing & collage, private collectionYesterday, Today, Today, 2012 in galerie Transit Mechelen
Procedure Room as installed in the Kiev Biennial 2012
