March 22 – May 18, 2024
Curator: Anna Aliieva
The National Art Museum of Ukraine presents an exhibition project by contemporary artist Nikita Kadan. The show brings together around fifteen new works created after 2022 and represents a sustained artistic inquiry focused on the theme of art’s historical optics. Kadan’s gaze is directed at modernity in a broad sense and the controversial nature of how it is narrated through art history—an account that is fragmented and revised. The artist consistently explores the historiography of art, exposing politically motivated gaps in its narrative.
🔸 Central question of the exhibition: How does war change the way we look at art?
Kadan engages both with visual imagery from past art and with the body of historical knowledge shaped by research institutions, especially museums. In this exhibition, the landscape of art history appears as an integral part of a broader historical context—it follows the same patterns and logic as history itself.
The exhibition features installations, graphic series, painting, photography, and video, presented across four museum halls. Among the key works are the sound installation Alarm (Sirens and Mast), large-scale graphic pieces Shchekavytsia and Sinnerman, as well as Project with Deferred Realization, a work dedicated to the complex relationship between the history of modernism in Ukraine and today’s war.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a public program, including guided tours and artist talks.
🔸 The project is presented with the support of Voloshyn Gallery. The exhibition is supported by the Pirus Family Foundation.