Edited by: Roberta De Monte
Artist: Zhanna Kadyrova
Where: Venice Biennale Pavilions
Parts and components disassembled and reassembled: they are fragments of an epochal revolution that has characterised the recent history of Ukraine, a country which was flung into the Western world in the late 1990s. The works of the sculptor Zhanna Kadyrova, born in 1981 in Brovary, are a collage of debris, concrete and tiles – almost an attempt to bring all the pieces back together, to create a new balance.
Her works are wrapped up in cultural references, she uses the materials that can be found on the Ukrainian building façades and she gives the Russian mosaic tradition a new and ironic twist to recreate road signs, shells and monumental statues as well.
A slight melancholy and apparent fragility and temporariness filter through her sculptures, yet, at the same time, the tiles, which often give life to simple everyday objects, are capable of conveying a special vital and colourful energy.
This young artist, together with Mykola Ridnyi and Hamlet Zinkovskyi, represents Ukraine at the 55th Venice Art Biennale: the exhibition ‘The Monument to a Monument’ was inaugurated at Palazzo Loredan on May 30 and anticipated by the presentation of the anthological catalogue ‘Album 2013’, which describes Kadyrova’s activity and was published with the support of the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantine Sorokin Foundation .
Zhanna Kadyrova started her career within the REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, born within the framework of the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’, exploded in 2004 as a consequence to the presidential election results. There have been 15 solo exhibitions dedicated to her so far and she has participated to more than a hundred group exhibitions. Moreover, she received several awards in the contemporary art field, such as the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award (2012).
The exhibition will close on November 24 2013, as the majority of Venice Biennale pavilions.
