David Chichkan, one among Ukraine’s most distinguished up to date artists, whose life and work have been inseparable from his devotion to the beliefs of anarchism, has died whereas combating Russian forces, based on Ukraine’s Ministry of Tradition and Strategic Communications. The ministry cited a report by his fellow combatants, stating that he was struck “whereas repelling an assault by Russian infantry” in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia area on 8 August, and on “the subsequent day, his coronary heart stopped”.
The artist joins a rising listing of Ukrainian cultural employees who’ve died for the reason that starting of Russia’s full-scale invasion, together with 36-year-old Maryna Hrytsenko, the chief curator of the Galagan Artwork Museum in Chernihiv, who was killed in a Russian drone strike on 7 August whereas serving as a medic. PEN Ukraine, a human rights organisation devoted to defending freedom of speech and selling the event of worldwide cultural cooperation, has recorded the deaths of 221 cultural figures since February 2022.
The ache of hope and despair
Chichkan, who was born in Kyiv in 1986, got here from a dynasty of Ukrainian artists that spanned Soviet socialist realism and anti-Soviet non-conformist artwork. His great-grandfather Leonid Chichkan’s works are amongst these which have been looted by Russia from the Kherson Artwork Museum below the guise of “preserving cultural property”.
Whereas not formally educated as an artist, David Chichkan grew to become recognized for his avant-garde and iconographic photos. His work was infused with references to Ukraine’s activist and anarchist historical past, together with references to the nineteenth century feminist author Lesia Ukrainka, and to Nestor Makhno, an anarchist revolutionary who fought for Ukrainian independence a century in the past.
Cultural critic and curator Kostiantyn Doroshenko wrote in 2016, two years after Russia’s preliminary invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, that Chichkan’s works convey “the ache of despair, the ache of hope, the ache of expertise and stubbornness, the ache of particular person confidence in the potential of world social change of the world and man regardless of on a regular basis actuality pulsates in his artwork”.
Chichkan shared this work to Instagram in 2024, with the caption “anarchic and anti-authoritarian left drones”
David Chichkan by way of Instagram
The Artwork Newspaper contacted Doroshenko by way of social media, the place he described Chichkan as distinctive amongst Ukrainian artists for his principled stance. “Amongst many artists who declared a socially crucial, leftist agenda to the extent of its worldwide relevance and grant help, he was the one one who maintained consistency between his statements and actions,” Doroshenko wrote.
“He believed that each particular person is an artist, and seen his works as a method of conveying to society the concepts of equality, freedom, duty, and the best of everybody to be themselves. He resisted any stigmatization, reacted sharply to discrimination, and noticed the causes of those phenomena in patriarchy, capitalism, and energy hierarchies.
“As an anarchist, he thought-about warfare to be the end result of anti-human energy. However he went to the entrance as a result of he noticed that Russia was destroying all freedom, human dignity, and variety…Like Nestor Makhno, just like the anarchists through the Spanish Civil Conflict, he understood that generally one should struggle for the longer term with weapons in hand.”
The outlet left behind
Previously Chichkan was repeatedly focused by right-wing Ukrainian activists for elevating questions in his artwork in regards to the historical past and up to date path of Ukrainian society. An exhibition of his works on the Middle for Visible Tradition in Kyiv was violently raided by masked militants in 2017. In January 2024, a web based marketing campaign led to the cancellation of his exhibition at Odesa Nationwide Effective Arts Museum.
In a Fb publish on 11 August, Chichkan’s spouse Anya addressed these campaigners. “He died in battle on the entrance traces, spent a yr in hell itself, whereas armchair patriots from the rear criticized him for his leftism,” she wrote. The artist can be survived by his younger son.
Lisa Korneichuk is the editor-in-chief of Navigating the Conflict as Artists in Ukraine, a handbook revealed earlier this yr by Ukraine’s Museum of Modern Artwork, a non-government organisation which, in 2022, co-founded the Ukrainian Emergency Artwork Fund. Korneichuk instructed The Artwork Newspaper in regards to the gaping gap left by artists going to warfare, and the way this challenge is being addressed.
“In Ukraine, the subject is unavoidable—any man aged 25 to 60 will be drafted—so we felt it was essential to deal with it and embody voices of artists who at the moment are serving,” she wrote. “One of many profound losses of warfare is that it pulls these individuals out of social {and professional} life.
“We consider it’s essential to help artists within the army to allow them to keep a presence within the skilled and public sphere, even when they’re absent, unable to journey, or to provide new work. Making certain their continued participation must be a precedence for organisations that help artists in disaster worldwide.”
