Nikita Kadan
Nikita Kadan (born 1982 in Kyiv) graduated from National Academy of Fine Art (Kyiv) in 2007. He works with installation, sculpture, painting, graphics, often in interdisciplinary collaboration with historians, architects, and human rights activists. He is a member of the artist group REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) and founding member of Hudrada (Artistic Committee), a curatorial and activist collective. Kadan lives in Kyiv. His works were presented in the Ukrainian Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.
SILENCE IN THE CLASSROOM
2025
installation
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Visual Culture Research Center for the Kyiv Biennial 2025
Interrupted histories, destroyed artworks, repressed authors, blank spots: this is Ukrainian art history written from Soviet times to the war-ravaged present. For artist Nikita Kadan, Ukrainian art history is a “house full of ghosts.” His installation Silence in the Classroom resembles an ordinary school classroom. The catalogues presented in it, including two archives by Feodosiy Tetianych and Yuri Leiderman, evoke various phenomena of Ukrainian art and the changing narratives around them. Placed on high plinths, the ruins from the front line are mute witnesses to the ongoing war. Many buildings of cultural institutions have been destroyed, museums looted, and most museum collections are stored underground or have been evacuated.