Mykola Ridnyi
Labor Circle
Mykola Rydnyi is an author of installations, objects and videos. At the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, he shows two video works. Monument (2011) documents the demolition of a Soviet public monument in Kharkiv, part of the process of ‘cleansing’ the city of relics of the past ahead of the upcoming Euro 2012 football cup. Removing a memorial of an abolished ideology, workers create room for other manifestations of state power. Anthill (2011) shows the work of iron ore miners in Komsomolsk, comparing it to the work of ants. Manual labour, once a guarantee of splendour and national-hero status, has today become a domain of the ‘excluded’ and ‘invisible”. Rydnyi’s piece tells about the degradation of the work-leader ethos and asks about the cost the ordinary people pay for political and economic changes.
Exhibition of Mykola Ridnyi is presented in the framework of the project Transfer: Polish-Ukrainian Exchange 2012 in cooperation with the Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev and is curated by Marianna Dobkowska.
