Sans titre

"To include kitsch in the Soviet ideology was already to speak ironically of it." (Mikhaïlov)

Boris Mikhailov is one of the leading figureheads of the Kharkiv School, a transgenerational group of Ukrainian photographers since the 1970s. Raised in the social conditions and aesthetics of the Soviet era, his work combines personal memories and collective desires. ln the SOTS-ART series, the artist appropriates to himself a practice that was extremely embedded in the Soviet tradition, that of retouching and colouring little portraits. ln this subversive work on the meaning of images, red, like the other colours, is reduced to a purely decorative dimension.