Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in Brovary, in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, where she currently lives and works. She is a member of the R.E.P. (Revolution Experimental Space) group. After graduating from the Taras Shevchenko State Art School in 1999, she received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award and the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (both in 2012). She was also awarded the Special Prize (2011), the Main Prize (2013) and the Special Prize – Future Generation Art Prize International (2014), all by the PinchukArtCentre.
From the outset, Kadyrova’s artistic practice has encompassed various disciplines, including sculpture, photography, video and performance, with a strong focus on the site and exhibition space. In her work, the question of context unfolds to reveal the rhythms of history in motion, those of a multilayered world whose complexities disappear beneath its immediacy. Often departing from the aesthetic conventions of the socialist ideal still present in Ukraine’s contemporary heritage, Kadyrova’s perspective is partly informed by the sculptural and symbolic qualities of urban construction materials. Ceramics, glass, stone and concrete thus occupy a central place in her work.
Kadyrova was working on several site-specific projects until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 disrupted all her plans. From her new home in the Carpathian Mountains, she began working on the humanitarian project PALIANYTSIA, which has since been exhibited around the world, including in Italy, Germany, Norway, Japan, France, the United States, Sweden, Austria, Georgia, Romania, Thailand and India. Zhanna has since returned to Kyiv and produced new works addressing the war, which were presented in her first major retrospective at Kunstverein Hannover in Germany. Another major exhibition, Flying Trajectories, was presented at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, Ukraine, beginning in June 2023.
Kadyrova has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 2023 Kochi Biennale in India, the 3rd Bangkok Art Biennale (2022), the 58th, 56th (international projects) and 55th (Ukrainian Pavilion) editions of the Venice Biennale, the 2017 Kyiv Biennial and Crack Up – Crack Down, the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In recent years, she has focused on site-specific projects, including an outdoor installation in the Semmering Mountains in Austria, a dispersed intervention and a permanent sculpture in the village of Tolfa, Italy, and a sculptural project for the Jing’an International Sculpture Project (JISP) in Shanghai, China.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Kunstverein Hannover (Germany); Stavanger Art Museum (Norway); Kunstforum Wien (Austria); Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv (Israel); Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo and La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (France); Kunstraum Innsbruck (Austria); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (Hungary); Museum of Modern Art and Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (Poland); Spinnerei Leipzig, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, and DAAD, Zimmerstraße, Berlin (Germany); the National Union of Architects and Construction Engineers of Cuba, Havana (Cuba); Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere (Finland); and Lviv Municipal Art Center, Lviv, the National Art Museum of Ukraine and PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (Ukraine).