Nikita Kadan
‘Alarm (Sirens and Mast)’, 2023, sound installation
‘Cheap Gas, Cheap Blood’, 2025, drawing, paper, charcoal, 45 × 63 cm
Nikita works with graphics, sculpture, painting, collage, installation, and objects. Creating interdisciplinary projects, he also collaborates with architects, sociologists, and human rights defenders. Among the many themes Nikita explores in his practice, a significant place is held by the reinterpretation of 20th-century art history—particularly its unspoken narratives, distortions, lacunae, and losses. In speaking about revising history, the artist examines the museum system of representation, questions the impossibility of an unbiased gaze and independent judgment, and reflects on themes of nation-building and the role of art in wartime.
The audio installation Alarm (Sirens and Mast) reproduces the sound of an air-raid siren—already a familiar element of Ukraine’s soundscape—in the voice of an opera singer. The work references the image of sirens from Greek mythology: through their singing they bewitched travelers and led them to their doom. The artist describes Ukrainian reality by drawing on elements of classical narrative, reinterpreting them anew. Is there something seductive about being under mortal threat? Life in a state of constant danger and risk intensifies the experience of living. How does one pass by the sirens and survive?
The work Cheap Gas, Cheap Blood belongs to the series of inscription-drawings Repeating Speech, which emerged after the start of the full-scale invasion and was created for the Secession building in Vienna. Laconic expressions—political slogans such as “F** the war,” “Stop Putin,” “Close the sky”*—appeared and came into active use during anti-war protests. The ineffectiveness of verbal resistance to Russian military aggression, coupled with the impossibility of silently accepting this reality, compels their constant repetition, turning them into a kind of incantation.
