Voloshyn Gallery is pleased to present The Radial Bone, a solo show by Nikita Kadan on view at the gallery’s Miami location.
The Radial Bone exhibition structure is arranged around the central image of a sharp and shiny ray whichviolently pierces the body, penetrates the soil and various inhabited environments. This ray symbolically stands for the destructive human desire, the right of the ‘strong-willed’ ones to colonize, extract and consume. Any war of the human world is also a war against non-human species. Every war is also an ecocide – and the Russian war in Ukraine is no exception.
And this war brings to life the shadows of empires and “historical nations”, willing to colonize and to bring to submission those forms of life, they label as “non-historical”. For centuries, both in Russian and Westernhistoriography, Ukraine was considered rather just as a “territory” with fertile lands, and its inhabitants – as ones deprived of any real historical agency. They were looked at either as “natural born agrarians” who needed patronage, or simply as an addition to the landscape to be colonized, subjugated and used for the benefit of the powerful ones.
In the work that gave the title to the whole exhibition, the Radial bone or Radius (literally the ‘Ray bone’ in Ukrainian*) is extended with a shiny metal ‘ray’. Similarly, the handles of old Ukrainian agricultural toolsextended with the “rays”, likely turning into the weapons. It is worth mentioning that despite the centuries of colonial oppression, Ukraine became the place of numerous peasant uprisings.
Other motifs in the painting and graphic works of the exhibition – an ears of wheat and the ribbons from the Ukrainian Soviet coat of arms, a crater from an explosion with a face-mask at the bottom, animals in flames – in one way or another refer to questions about the human’s “right of the strong one” in relation to the non-human world, and about the understanding of these questions by those who had a long-lasting historical experience of being dehumanized.
*The word radius is Latin for “ray”. The radius is named so because the radius (bone) acts like the radius (of a circle).
Nikita Kadan (b. 1982 in Kyiv, Ukraine) works with painting, graphics, and installation, often collaborating interdisciplinary with architects, sociologists, and human rights activists. He is a member of the artist group R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) and a founding member of Hudrada (Artistic Committee), a curatorial and activist collective. Nikita Kadan has recently been featured in important solo and group exhibitions, including “Artists in Time of War” at Castello di Rivoli (Turin, Italy), “Skin and Shell” at the Lewben Foundation in Vilnius (Lithuania), and “The Fire and the Ashes” at the Museum Sztuki in 2023. In 2021, the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kyiv (Ukraine) devoted a major solo exhibition to him, following the initiative of MUMOK (Vienna, AT), which held his first institutional and international solo exhibition in 2019. Nikita Kadan was the winner of the Pinchuk Art Centre Prize in 2011 and the recipient of the Special Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize in 2014. He also participated in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and the parallel program of the 59th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Nikita Kadan’s works are included in public collections, such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, mumok (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Military History Museum in Dresden, The Art Collection Telekom, The Kingdom of Belgium, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FRAC Bretagne, and Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato.
Open to all visitors from 11—4 pm. Progressive Art Brunch brings together participating galleries several Sundays throughout the year. The event highlights the current programming at each venue and enables visitors a more intimate look at the exhibitions on view.
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