Zhanna Kadyrova: Border Memory

Uppsala Art Museum proudly presents Border Memory, Zhanna Kadyrova’s first solo exhibition in Sweden. Through large-scale installations, video and drawings, Kadyrova depicts the horrors of war and the new reality for the Ukrainian people, directly from Kyiv. The artist has a particular sensitivity to the inherent agency of materials, where shell wounds in the asphalt, as in the work Data Extraction, or shattered sheet metal, as in the series Harmless War, can represent the humanitarian suffering and the attempts to annihilate a nation. The works illustrate the current war crimes being committed as well as expose a crisis of civilization, where a country is under attack.

Zhanna Kadyrova lets urban materials such as asphalt, concrete and tiles bear witness to history’s many layers of rearrangements, visions and shattered dreams. The artist works in a post-minimalist tradition, and the spatial installations refer both to utopian movements and to how abstraction in art is linked to the modern project.

Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, Kadyrova’s art has focused entirely on psychological and sociological aspects of the war. The destruction, the displacement of refugees, and the vulnerability, but also the gap between being present in the midst of the war and following the events from a safe distance.

The war started in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbas, but it is also a repeated historical pattern of Russian imperialism. In the exhibition, we follow Kadyrova’s journey, from touring internationally and being a celebrated artist to seeking refuge in the Carpathian Mountains in 2022 and how she simultaneously develops her artistic language of resistance. Some projects, such as Palianytsia and Russian Rocket, have an activist undertone and are a response to Russian disinformation campaigns. In the recently produced series Maps, tiles have been shattered and reassembled into abstract patterns which oscillate between explosive border battles and stillness.

Border Memory is about the geopolitical game, where border lines have dissolved and shifted over the centuries. Kadyrova asks what defending the integrity of the nation-state means on a deeper level and claims that border memory is a collective process linked to the people who fled their homes and are struggling to return. 

Curator: Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson, Uppsala Art Museum

Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in Brovary in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, she lives and works in Kyiv. The artist has an extensive international career, participating in biennials, solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in more than 15 countries. Daily Bread was Kadyrova’s first major retrospective, which took place in 2023 at the Kunstverein Hannover. In the same year, the solo exhibition Flying Trajectories was held at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv. During the spring she will also present a soloshow at Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague.

Zhanna Kadyrova graduated in 1999 from the sculpture department at Taras Shevchenko State Art School in Kiev. Since then, she has received several awards, including the Kazimir Malevich Prize (2012), the Grand Prix of the Kiev Sculpture Project (2012) and the Special Prize of Future Generation Art Prize (2014 ). Kadyrova has also engaged in collective projects and is one of the founders of the group ”R.E.P.” (Revolution Experimental Space). In 2019, she participated in the curated part of the Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times. She has also represented Ukraine in the biennial in 2013 and 2015.

During the spring, there will be several opportunities to immerse yourself in the exhibition and its theme through lectures, panel discussions, concerts, poetry readings, and guided tours.