Zhanna Kadyrova. Experiments. 2014. Ink-jet print, nitric acid
Work description
This series was created by Kadyrova after a trip to the Donetsk region, where active hostilities were already underway following the start of the Russian invasion. Transferring what she saw onto photographs of the then peaceful Kyiv, the artist damaged the images with nitric acid, creating a visual effect of an explosion. These works reminded residents of other Ukrainian cities that the country was at war.
The very name of the project emphasizes the experimental technique of its creation. The artist works with acid, which is usually used in photochemical processes as an oxidizer, but she sprays it onto finished photographs as if applying paint to canvases.
The work was created in collaboration with Denys Ruban. It was for this project that Kadyrova won the main prize of the Future Generation Art Prize 2014.
During the first exhibition of this work in Kyiv, spectators would come to me and comment with fear about the bad omen in the work, and I didn’t know what to say. I had just come back from Donetsk region, where the war had already begun. In Donetsk, the past was still very much visible, and the Soviet context was omnipresent in the buildings, the planning of the streets, and the colors, including the blue tiles, which had disappeared from Kyiv years ago. There, the feeling of the growing conflict hung in the air. [1].
- Kadyrova Z., “Experiments, 2014,”. in Zhanna Kadyrova., (Berlin : Distanz, 2026), 245.
