Artist Talk

Nikita Kadan's work focuses on the artistic examination of post-communist social and political developments and their origins and causes in the Soviet system. Kadan produces drawings, paintings and photographs, but also objects, sculptures and installations. The artist is a sensitive and critical observer and interpreter of historical upheavals and their connections with the communist past and the turbo-capitalist present. In his exhibitions, the artist addresses the visibility and function of the artistic avant-garde in Ukraine within contemporary neoliberalism, which in the conflict with Russia is characterised by a policy geared towards military objectives and an ideology of desolidarisation of the social fabric.

Nikita Kadan was born in Kiev in 1982. He has been a member of the artist group R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) since 2004 and co-founder and member of the curatorial group HUDRADA since 2008. Kadan studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev in the class for monumental painting until 2007. The Ukrainian artist's artistic repertoire ranges from installation, graphics and painting to wall and poster design in public spaces. His interdisciplinary collaborations with architects, human rights activists and sociologists are as diverse as his mediums. He has participated in numerous biennials, including Venice, Istanbul, Kiev and Busan in 2015 and 2017. He was awarded the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2011 and the Special Prize of the Jury of The Future Generation Art in 2014. The latest award he received was the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. Kadan's artworks have been acquired by museum collections: Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (Germany), MUMOK Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna (Austria), MuHKa Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (Belgium), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Poland), Military History Museum in Dresden (Germany), National Art Museum of Ukraine (Ukraine).