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ALEVTINA KAKHIDZE

The works of Alevtina Kakhidze (b.1973) are directly informed by her biography. Born in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the artist has developed her practice in Kyiv, while always maintaining a connection to her birthplace. Initially, Kakhidze worked predominantly as a performance artist, using the discipline to address subjects of gender, social status and the position of female artists in a complex system of cultural hierarchies. For her performance Only For Men, Or My Destined Beloved Show Yourself In The Mirror, the artist sat in front of a mirror in a gallery and only allowed male visitors into the room, critically reflecting the dominance of male visibility in a patriarchal society. A subsequent performance, I Am Late For The Plane Which Is Impossible To Miss (2010), saw the artist borrow a private jet from the notorious Ukrainian oligarch and patron of the arts Rinat Akhmetov. The artist wrote letters to the wealthiest people in the country, in which she asked them to draw the landscape from the windows of their private jets. Two years later, the Akhmetov Foundation responded, giving the artist access to a private jet so that she could draw the view herself. Although Kakhidze took the flight, she chose not to draw anything while in the air because, according to her, it was not her intention to create a work but rather her request that the jet owner create it. The project rethinks the hierarchical relationship between patron and artist, and the differing circumstances and limitations surrounding both.

Perhaps the topic that most frequently emerges in Kakhidze’s work is the world of plants as a political and social metaphor. The artist’s fascination with plants is rooted in their ability to regenerate under any circumstances, as well as their strength and quiet resilience. Her interest in plants is expressed in such projects as For Children About the Citizenship of People, Plants, and Animals (2016), The Battle of Gardeners (2017), Flycatchers and Other Insects Go to Vote (2017), I Still Draw Love, Plants and Things  and The Green Theatre Where Plants and Insects Are Actors (2021). Since 2011 she has also organised a private residency programme, The Muzychi Expanded History Project, in her house in Muzychi, a rural area near Kyiv. The house is surrounded by the artist’s sustainable garden, allowing the residents to work closely with nature while also contributing to the local and national artistic development of the village. For I Still Draw Love, Plants and Things, Kakhidze drew three locations – the site of the exhibition in which the work was shown (Brussels), her current home (Muzychi) and her birthplace (Zhdanivka) – as one single, seamless ‘political’ garden, which represents an ideal of unity that is currently fractured by the war. (...)

An important element of Kakhidze’s current work is the artist’s call for the ‘cancellation’ of Russian culture, which she sees as the cause of the violence that is unfolding in Ukraine. Her drawings reflect an ongoing national reconsideration of once-dominant Russian culture and a move towards a renewed focus on Ukrainian culture, which was suppressed for centuries under Russian imperial rule. A number of her recent drawings are strongly anti-colonialist in their expression, and she continues to challenge the habitual imperialist dichotomy of Russian culture as ‘enveloping’ Ukrainian culture (...)

A socially sensitive and prolific artist, Kakhidze explores a vast range of sociopolitical topics in her work and responds to the everyday traumas and concerns of Ukrainian society with impressive acuity. 

Svitlana Biedarieva for Burlington Contemporary,  2022

BIOGRAPHIE