​Zhanna Kadyrova, Ukraine

Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in Brovary, the city in Kyiv region, Ukraine, where she currently lives and works. She graduated from Taras Shevchenko State Art School and received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award, the Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Award for Public Art, the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (all 2012) as well as a Pinchuk Art Centre Special Prize (2011) and Main Prize Winner (2013). Her works have been extensively exhibited worldwide, recently at the M17 Contemporary Art Centre, Kyiv (2021), the Shanghai International Sculpture Project JISP, Shanghai, the Ukrainian Institute in New York (2020). She participated at the 58th, 56th and 55th Venice Biennale, respectively in 2019, 2015 and 2013. Kadyrova's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Bureau for Cultural Translations, Leipzig, the Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Museum of Modern Art in Poland and the Pinchuk Art Centre (2012, 2013) in Kyiv, where her first major retrospective will be held in 2023.

Kadyrova’s practice, tackling since its very beginning disciplines as different as sculpture, photo, video, performance, deeply focuses on the exhibition site and space. In her work, the issue of context unravels to reveal the rhythm of History on the move - that of a world whose multiple layers disappear behind their immediacy. Often diverting the aesthetic canons of the socialist ideal still present in the heritage of contemporary Ukraine, Kadyrova’s perspective is partially informed by the plastic and symbolic values of urban building materials. Thus, ceramics, glass, stone and concrete enter the spotlight of her work.

Represented by:

GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing ­/ Le Moulin / Habana / Roma / Sao Paulo / Paris​,

Gallery ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN, Bratislava / Prague