Vita
Lada Nakonechna is an artist and researcher who has been active in various artistic, curatorial and editorial groups (associations) in Ukraine since 2005. In her artistic practice, Nakonechna consistently questions her position as an artist
and researcher. The goal of this problematization is to identify viewpoints that are established through artistic methods and reproduced through the art education system. Through institutional critical approaches, she investigates the connection of art with the practices of power production. Lada Nakonechna has presented her works in numerous exhibitions, including
solo exhibitions at the National Art Museum of Ukraine and group exhibitions at the Albertinum-Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the
Gallery of Contemporary Art Leipzig, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Malmö Art Museum or the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb. She is the recipient of the Kazimir Malevich Art Award (Kyiv, 2014), Women in Arts Award (UN Women Ukraine and the Ukrainian Institute Kyiv, 2020), PinchukArtCentre Prize (Kyiv, 2013). Her works are in the collections of the Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Malmö Kunstmuseum among others.
Research project
The doctoral project explores the institutional and pedagogical forms of the artistic paradigms of modernism and socialist realism in their formation and functioning throughout the history of the Ukrainian Academy of Art in Kyiv during the 20th century. The research is based on archival materials related to the history of the Institution, which was founded during the revolutionary year of 1917 and faced several cardinal changes of the artistic paradigms to be preferred. Nakonechna's intention is to consider their formation in an educational context, examining the modern pedagogical approaches developed by avant-garde artists and tracing these approaches in the socialist realist educational model. The method of socialist realism education is considered as the result of modernist efforts that developed from discussions about the functions of art. Focusing on the formal and institutional manifestations of modernism and socialist realism in the local Ukrainian socio-political context challenges their homogeneous representation in global art history.
Main research areas
Modern and Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe
Institutional history in the post-totalitarian condition
Critical and Collaborative Art education
Image and representation politics
Exhibition practices
Practice based research
Archival studies
Projects
2024 Summer Semester, Seminar How art utters war in a situation of the crisis of language, Universität Kassel and the Method Fund (Supported by the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst)
2022 – 2023 Winter Semester, Seminar Experimental Art Research Cabinet: Strategies of an Art Education, HFBK Hamburg, Germany 2021 Research and publication project Dictionary of Contemporary Art, The Method Fund, Kyiv (Publication: Dictionary of Contemporary Art, Kateryna Badianova, Lada Nakonechna ed., Kyiv: Method Fund, 2021. (UA))
2020 Research project and online publication CreatingRuin.net, collaboration with Reding International, University of Reding, UK
2017 – 2018 Socialist Realism. Seeming to Be Another, research project, on the basis of the National Art Museum of Ukraine collection, Kyiv (Publication: Socialist Realism: Seeming to Be Another, Notebook № 1 and № 2, Kateryna Badianova, Lada Nakonechna, Denis Pankratov ed., Kyiv: Method Fund, 2017. (UA)) 2016: Preface. Aesthetic and Social Aspirations of Critical Art, Taras Shevchenko National Museum, Les-Kurbas Centre, Kyiv (Publication: Preface, Kateryna Badianova, Lada Nakonechna, Denis Pankratov ed., Kyiv: Method Fund, 2016. (UA/ENG)
2016 Bread. Socialist Realism, Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum, Ukraine
Since 2012 co-curator of educational and research program Course of Art of The Method Fund.
Scholarships and academic research trips
2020 University of the Arts Poznan (Wielka19 Association Stipend), Poland
2018 Reading School of Art, University of Reading, UK
2017 Griffelkunst, Hamburg
2017 DAAD “Arts and Media” program, research stipend
2015 KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna
2015 18th Street Arts Center artist residency program, Santa Monica, USA
2014 Fellowship Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg—Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany
2010 Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr residency program, Zug in cooperation with BINZ39, Zurich, Switzerland
Lectures and events
2025: College Art Association (CAA) 113th Annual Conference, New York Сity, USA (‘Nachwuchs International’ Universität Kassel grant and Registration Grant from CCA)
2024: Modernism in Ukraine: Local Contexts, Intercultural Encounters, Transnational Exchanges, Conference at The Courtauld Institute, London 2024: The 36th CIHA Lyon 2024 Congress, J. Dématérialisation/Rematérialisation, Lyon, France
2023: Perspective speaker at the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma (Mallorca), Spain
2022: Lecture and Workshop Relationship networks. Violence, Classe Expanded Cinema, HGB Leipzig
2022: Das Museum als Spiegel historischer Brüche und gesellschaftlicher Diskontinuitäten: Wie Museumssammlungen die Geschichte der Ukraine erzählen. Albertinum, Dresden
2018: Lexicon of Change: Ukraine 5 Years after Maidan. Conference initiated and organized by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, Academy of Arts, Berlin
2013: Revisiting Footnotes, Symposium, Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia
Exhibitions / curatorial work
Solo exhibitions:
2024: Below Ground Level, Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin, Berlin
2024: R.E.P. History, NAMU—National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv
2024: Socialist realism discourse trap or how to gaze at self-confident man from DDR. Intervention into the Gesichter der Arbeit section of the exhibition The 20th And 21st Century. Art From Leipzig at MdbK, Leipzig.
2021: Disciplined Vision, NAMU-National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv
2021: Disciplined Vision: School, Artsvit Gallery, Dnipro, Ukraine
2020: Images from Abroad, Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin, Berlin
2016: Experiments (with Zhanna Kadyrova), BWA WARSZAWA, Poland
2016: Exhibition, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv
2014: The State of Things, Espace Croix-Baragnon, Toulouse, France
2012: Weekdays, Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw
2011: Perspective, permanent project in a public space, Leipzig University Bibliotheca Albertina, Germany
Group exhibitions
2025: Hollow Earth, Kyiv Biennial 2025, Kunstraum Memphis, Linz
2025: Radical Hope, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
2024: Zeichnung. Idee – Geste – Raum. Museum unter Tage, Bochum
2023: Kaleidoscope of (Hi)stories: Ukrainian Art 1912–2023, Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden and Museum De Fundatie, Zwolle
2022: We No Longer Feel the Future, MUZA - Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv
2022: Den Lettiska Samlingen, Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden
2022: Ein Brief von der Front, Haus der Kunst München, Germany
2021: Garden After the Gods, JUMP Contemporary Art Center, Poltava, Ukraine
2021: Dedication: Traces and Tactics, Kristianstads Konsthall, Sweden
2019: At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art 2013–2019, The National Museum of Cultures, Mexico City
2018: The World on Paper, Palais Populaire, Berlin
2018: I am the Mouth: Works from Central and Eastern European Artists from Art Collection Telekom, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Croatia
2016: The School of Kyiv. Leipzig Class. Seminar: Politics of Form, GFZK — Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig
2016: Semantic Riots, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel, Switzerland
Curatorial work
2022 ongoing: Series of encounters at the daadgalerie, Berlin (in collaboration with Bettina Klein).
2022: Entfernte erträgliche Morde, Plakataktion in der Stadt Berlin, Polnisches Institut Berlin
2017: Festivities Are Cancelled!, main venue of The Kyiv International – Kyiv Biennial (Hudrad curatorial collective)
2016: Into the darkness, WUK, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (Hudrada curatorial collective)
2014: Referendum on withdrawal from the human race, art-centre Closer, Kyiv and Teatr Powszechny, Warsaw (Hudrada curatorial collective)
2012: Disputed territory, Kroshitsky Art Museum, Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine (Hudrada curatorial collective)