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Item: The Chronicle / Хроніка

2016

Drawing, 18 x (15 x 20 cm)/(20 x 15 cm) .
Materials: ink on paper

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK007960).

The Chronicle is a series of drawings by Nikita Kadan. The material used while working on the series included photographs of victims of the Lviv pogrom of the Jewish community, Polish and Ukrainian victims of the Volhynia massacre, victims of NKVD, and civilians and prisoners of war murdered under Nazi occupation. The series is a reference to a multiannual phenomenon of photographic manipulation: photographs are distributed with captions altering the order of executioners and their victims. The history of manipulation is nothing but continuity in the history of crime, on a variety of levels and differently motivated. Later, manipulation is detected and all sides proceed with revealing mutual truths. The struggle for memory morphs into competition to generate an ideologised imitation of memory. The Chronicle reflects contemporary “memory wars”. The artist offers a suggestion that history should always be viewed directly – without exception – and never through the protective looking-glass of an ideologically founded mythology.