Pedestal. Practice of exclusion

This "monument to monuments" demonstrates the ongoing difficulties of collective historical memory in Ukraine.

Nikita Kadan explores how historical narratives are constructed, as well as themes of memory, political violence and trauma. This work represents a massive pedestal typical for Soviet monuments. White text documents what the artist labels as the "War of the Monuments" in post-Soviet Ukraine: vandalism of both Soviet and new monuments. The sculpture seems to have become a somewhat ironic prophecy - empty pedestals haunt many Ukrainian cities, "awaiting new heroes" - while the problem lies within the actual threatening nature of the plinth itself.