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- From the “Anxiety of Black Earth” series
Sydorenko Victor
In the project “Anxiety of Black Earth”, Victor Sydorenko’s characters are trapped in overnight dreams of the restless Ukrainian lands currently engulfed in war. The colour black has a whole range of associations in the new series of the artist. Apart from being the colour of night, the root of the word“black”in the Ukrainian language is found in such words as black soil, Chornobyl, and Chornobaivka. Each evokes associations with stories of the Holodomor genocide, man-made disaster, and russianinvasion.
Traumatic experiences of those who witnessed wars and social catastrophes are in the foreground of these stories. Starting from the “Amnesia” project by Victor Sydorenko, these characters appear in white underwear. Both then and now, they remind us of the fates of millions of people who are trying to get rid of burdensome memories and heal in anticipation of epochal changes.
Today, the earth is associated not only with the native area, but also with the substance that preserves evidence of russian war crimes: the bodies of murdered people, the rubble of cities, houses, and streets. In certain cases, the earth is literally the only thing that remained from the former life.
What was dear to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians since their childhood has been destroyed and turned into an exclusion zone with only ruins and ashes. The only thing that keeps it all together is courage. The people who ruthlessly look into the face of darkness.
Victor Sydorenko is an artist, art researcher, curator, teacher, an author of objects and photo compositions and also scientific and publicistic texts.
He was born in Taldykorgan (Kazakhstan) in 1953. He is the member and the President of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine.
In 2001 Sydorenko founded and headed the Modern Art Research Institute of Ukrainian Academy of Arts. In 1979 he graduated from the Kharkiv Art and Industry Institute with honours (class of Prof. B. Kosarev, winner of the USSR State Prize). In 1981 Victor Sydorenko started post-graduate studies at the USSR Academy of Arts creative workshops, supervised by the USSR Academy of Arts academician, the People’s Artist of the USSR, winner of the USSR state prizes Prof. S. Grigoriev.
At the same time Victor worked as an art director of the film “The Anatomy of the miracle” (director V. Ivanov). Sydorenko’s pathway from realism to neo avant-gardism represents the freedom of creativity of the last generation that grew and was working in a totalitarian regime.
In the project “Levitation” (2008–2009), the artist gives an advantage to the optical illusive game which is created by dense and viscous red color and by the space with large-format picturesque planes and installation. Man’s figures stretched out and soaring in air, are forcing you to lose reference points and coordinates, and even yourself.
