Artists

Zhanna Kadyrova

Born 1981 in Brovary in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, where she currently lives and works. She graduated from Taras Shevchenko State Art School and received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award, the Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Award for Public Art, the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (all 2012) as well as a PinchukArtCentre Special Prize (2011). Her works have been extensively exhibited worldwide, recently at the 55th Venice Biennale, the Moscow Biennale and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (all 2013).

Zhanna Kadyrova has developed a distinctive sculptural language for mapping spaces (in the broadest sense of the word). The materials she works with emphasize the fractured nature of her objects, which are related to and reflect upon the social context of the everyday.

Recent exhibitions:

2012 – “Angry birds” Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland

2012 – “Crowd”, solo exhibition, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine

2012 – “Myth "Ukrainian Baroque"”, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv

2012 – “Kyiv Sculpture Project”, Gryshko National Botanical Garden (grand-prix laureate)

2011 – “Implicit forms”, solo show, Small Gallery, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine.

For the exhibition of the 20 shortlisted artists for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2013 Kadyrova takes a new step in her artistic practice, resuming the lost tradition of mosaics, which can be found in public spaces all over the former Soviet Union. Those mosaics had an educational use, advocating morals and values. Adopting the same material and artistic language, Kadyrova transforms them by bringing them inside the gallery. Her work reflects critically on the changed use of images inside the public space and the decaying heritage of former soviet traditions.