Zhanna Kadyrova

PALIANYTSIA

cutting natural stone

Dimensions: variables

Found River Stones, video

Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in Brovary, in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, where she currently lives and works. Member of “R.E.P.” group (Revolution Experimental Space). After graduating from the Taras Shevchenko State Art School in 1999, she received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award and the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (both 2012). She was awarded the Special Prize (2011), Main Prize (2013) and Special Prize – Future Generation International (2014), all by PinchukArtCentre. 

Kadyrova’s practice, tackling since its very beginning disciplines as different as sculpture, photo, video, performance, deeply focuses on the exhibition site and space. In her work, the issue of context unravels to reveal the rhythm of History on the move – that of a world whose multiple layers disappear behind their immediacy. Often diverting the aesthetic canons of the socialist ideal still present in the heritage of contemporary Ukraine, Kadyrova’s perspective is partially informed by the plastic and symbolic values of urban building materials. Thus, ceramics, glass, stone and concrete enter the spotlight of her work.

Kadyrova was working on several site specific projects until the recent war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022 changed all her plans. She started working on the humanitarian project PALIANYTSIA, from her new home in the Carpathian Mountains which has already been exhibited worldwide (Italy, Germany, Norway, Japan, France, US, Sweden, Austria, Georgia, Romania, Thailand, India). Zhanna is now back in Kiev and produced new works about war, that were presented within her first major retrospective opened at the Kunstverein Hannover (Germany).  Another major exhibition “Flying Trajectories” has been shown at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev (Ukraine) from June 2023.

Kadyrova participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 2023 edition of the Kochi Biennale (India), the 3rd edition of the Bangkok Biennale (2022), the 58th, 56th (international projects) and 55th (Ukranian Pavillion) Venice Biennale, the 2017 Kyiv Biennale and “CrackUpCrackDown”, the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. During the past years she focused on site specific projects including an outdoor installation in the Semmering Mountains (Austria), a spread intervention and permanent sculpture in the village of Tolfa (Italy) a and a sculptural project for the Shanghai Jing’an International Sculpture Project (JISP) in Shanghai (China). 

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at Kunstverein Hannover (Germany), Stavanger Museum (Norway) Kunstforum Wien (Austria), Eretz Istael Museum Tel Aviv (Israel), Centre Pompidou, Palais Tokyo; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (all France), Kunstraum Innsbruck (Austria) Ludwig Museum, Budapest (Hungary), Museum of Modern Art; Uyazdovski Castle, Warsaw (both Poland), Spinnerei Leipzig; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; DAAD, Zimmerstrabe, Berlin (all Germany), the National Union of Cuban Architects and Construction Engineers, Havana (Cuba), Sara Hilden Museum, Tampere (Finnland), Lviv Municipal Art Center, Lviv, National Art Museum of Ukraine and PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (all Ukraine).