Nikita Kadan. Pogrom series. 2016
Work Description
A series of large-scale drawings that are based on photographic evidence of the pogrom that took place in Lviv early July 1941, in the days following the occupation by the German forces. Over a period of 4 weeks, over 4000 Jews were murdered.
The photographic evidence was captured by the German occupiers, and each drawing stays true to the composition of its source photograph. Kadan only permitted himself to make slight crops, maintaining the gaze of the photographers, who were in this case German officer or military journalist. The viewer is thus following the gaze of the perpetrator. This position forces the viewer into the uncomfortable position of looking at the crime as if witnessing the event itself. This unapologetic repetition of the perpetrator’s gaze, combined with Kadan’s aggressive and dynamic drawing technique and the large scale of each work, makes the images difficult to forget (resisting removal from history). At the same time, through the act of interpreting and naming documentary evidence of cruelty, he again exposes risks embedded in nationalism and its connection to fascist ideology.
- Geldhof, B. Nikita Kadan: Stone Hits Stone. The Past as an Urgent Now // Kadan, N. Stone Hits Stone. — Kyiv: PinchukArtCentre Research Platform, 2021. — 80 p.
