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DIAMONDS

2006 – 2011

Diamonds – Kadyrova’s trademark project – consists of cement forms resembling the standard cuts of precious gems, faced with shiny, colored ceramic tiles. The exclusive, status-lending form of diamonds is manifested in one of the most commonplace materials. Tile is more often associated with the sterility of public spaces – with bathrooms, hospital wards or metro stations – than with the sphere of art.   Kadyrova’s artistic talent is localized in her ability to bring about a metaphorical transformation of various utilitarian materials – be it tile, cement, veneer paneling – into valuable objects, both literally and figuratively. Transforming tile from an everyday material into an artistic one, Kadyrova creates works, ambiguous in their duality, that question the hierarchy of values in contemporary society.

How do these “diamonds” acquire their appraised value: does tile’s economic valence change as it becomes a more prestigious material, or do the “diamonds” lose some of their social appeal, having only an empty shell, the deceptive form of gems without any real material content?   Ironizing on the state of things in contemporary consumer society, Kadyrova once again emphasizes the conditionality of attaching value to the objects and realities of the external world, which in and of themselves, outside the human system of coordinates, have no appraised value, appearing as neither prestigious nor expensive nor cheap, but simply reflecting the vectors of human desires and neuroses. 

© Тексты о работах: Олена Червонык, Виталий Атанасов

© Дизайн: Денис Рубан 

© Переводы: Лариса Бабий,

Екатерина Кочеткова, Марьяна Матвейчук,

Куролай Абдухаликова

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