Outwardly, Zhanna Kadyrova’s sculptures repeat classic Post-Minimal shapes. But they are made of materials brought directly from Ukraine and damaged in the ongoing battles and rocket attacks there. Modified to fit the form of a generic artwork, they are coated, varnished, and polished so that very little remains of the textures of corrosion and destruction characterizing a war zone. Their specificity is lost in favor of an anonymous, essentially hollow theatrical form.

Kadyrova thus comments on how the war is glossed over and normalized—as is happening in the West right now, after an initial wave of solidarity. But she also incisively points to how the war is commodified as another hot topic in the art world—with its insatiable hunger for easily readable, smoothed-over artifacts.
 

Link

https://2022.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/artists/3654/zhanna-kadyrova