Nikita Kadan. “Anonymous, Scorched”. 2021
Job description
The sculptural form “Anonymous, Tarred” consists of “volumes” developed in 1920 at the VKhUTEMAS workshops by avant-garde students under the guidance of Anton Lavinsky. These volumes are a legacy of Soviet ideology, to which Kadan responds by covering the monumental form with black tar while simultaneously placing it on a traditional white marble pedestal. This blackened volume is a counterpoint to the white “Victory.” White is simultaneously a shell and an expression of utopian ideals. The black tar that covers the white form is, on the other hand, a symbolic act of desecration that corresponds to today’s attitude toward the political meaning of the avant-garde heritage in Ukraine. With this gesture—covering the sculpture with black tar—the artist proclaims the Soviet Utopia dead. Meanwhile, the respectful placement of it on a white marble pedestal attests to the importance of this Utopia as a memory before a hidden dystopian future. “Anonymous, Tarred”—the blackened Soviet legacy—and “Residents of the Colosseum”—the fascist history—represent two ideologies that defined the 20th century. Although the struggle between them has supposedly stopped (or even ended), it emphasizes the binary logic and violence, not ideology, that survived and continue to divide humanity in the 21st century.
- Heldhof, B. “Stone Hits Stone”: the past as an urgent present // Nikita Kadan. Stone Hits Stone. — Kyiv: Research Platform PinchukArtCentre, 2021. — 80 p.
