Recanonization 2018 | kadyrova EN

RECANONIZATION
2017

This series of works is devoted to decommunization – a significant component of memory politics in contemporary Ukraine.

In the middle twenties the USSR supported by new authorities, the organization of militant atheists, fought against religious prejudices and artifacts, and this antireligious activity grew into a state policy line. Decommunization policy with its expressive iconoclastic style focuses on brutal deletion of Soviet era relics from all public spaces. The militant antireligious propaganda methods hundred years ago are corresponding with a destructive activity of decommunization adepts. Embodying the peculiarities of quasireligious consciousness, those adepts, as a rule, are deaf to all arguments from defenders of Soviet historical and cultural heritage, and Soviet monuments relive the destiny of religious cult-objects overthrown by the godfathers. One of the artworks was performed during Kadyrova's participation

in the Nad Bogom residence in 2017. As an object for interaction, the artist chose the best of Ivan Bevz, a Soviet underground member executed by the German occupation authorities in 1943. According to official Soviet historiography, Bevz was the party functionary and the head of city library, who later became one of the leaders in Vynnytsia antifascist underground. His monument is installed on a central street in Vynnytsia. Kadyrova completed the bust with a massive, 140-centimeter golden halo, conferring the object of Soviet monumental propaganda features of a Christian saint.

The artist continues this line in her works exposed at the entrance group of the second pavilion in Kyiv Expocentre. Kadyrova mounts golden haloes on wall-carvings picturing milkmaids and shepherds. This simple gesture reveals the wrong side of the secular cult embodied in Soviet monumental propaganda and socialist realism with their numerous borrowings from religious art.

Kiev, Ukraine. 2021

Recanonization 2021

Vinnytsia, Ukraine. 2017

Recanonization 2017