David Chichkan
Davyd Chychkan was an artist and left-wing activist. His practice, shaped by the Maidan revolution (2013–2014), combined visual experimentation with political engagement. Working with watercolour graphics, installation, street art, and performance, he used the language of political posters and text to address society at large.
In 2014, he founded the Libertarian Club of Underground Dialectics, a research initiative examining the presence of right-wing ideologies in Ukraine through artistic means. His projects focused on rethinking Ukrainian national identity as an unfinished modernist project.
He presented solo exhibitions at Lviv Municipal Art Center (2022), Artsvit, Dnipro (2021, 2016), Bereznitsky Art Foundation, Kyiv (2020), and Visual Cultural Research Centre, Kyiv (2017). He took part in international projects including Imagine Ukraine (M HKA, Antwerp, 2022), Between Fire and Fire: Ukrainian Art Now (Vienna, 2019), Biennale Warszawa (2018), Permanent Revolution (Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2018), and Kyiv International — Kyiv Biennial 2017.
In 2024, Chychkan voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He died in August 2025 from wounds sustained on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Ribbons and Triangles, 2020–2022
Davyd Chychkan was an artist and anarcho-syndicalist activist whose practice was fuelled by the transformative potential of the Maidan Revolution (2013–2014). His more recent series of works before his untimely passing focused on re-imagining Ukraine and its values. Chychkan’s series Ribbons and Triangles combines the language of classic political posters with a meticulous and respectful attitude to the intellectual, artistic and cultural heritage of Ukraine. The folkloric elements, graphic patterns from Ukrainian embroidery, and the elements of traditional costume co-exist with modernist geometric designs. Along with the familiar colours of the Ukrainian flag — yellow and blue — the artist has added three more colours charged with symbolic connotations. Black corresponds to the idea of anti-authoritarianism; purple represents feminism and cultural progress; red refers to social equality and direct democracy.
A trinity of significant Ukrainian political and cultural figures often appears in Chychkan’s work: the political theorist, economist, historian and philosopher Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841–1895); the writer and feminist activist Lesya Ukrainka (1871–1913); and the writer, journalist, economist, activist, philosopher and ethnographer Ivan Franko (1856–1916). For the artist, the formation of the Ukrainian national idea is inseparable from the Ukrainian people’s fight against Russian imperialism. This new national iconography proposed by Chychkan both refers to the Ukrainian struggle for liberation in the past and suggests a possible direction for the development of Ukrainian society as an unfulfilled modernist project, based on a combination of ideas such as these.
Davyd Chychkan (1986, Kyiv – 2025, Zaporizhzhia Oblast)