The Spectators

20 October 2018 • Nikita Kadan

In 1934 Oleksandr Rodchenko created the album 10 Years of Uzbekistan. Some top government officials of the Soviet Uzbekistan, whose photographs were published in the album, were repressed during 1937-1938. Rodchenko brushed the faces of the political prisoners with ink in his author's copy of the album. Storing the portraits of “public enemies" may have resulted in arrest. I affirm that black stains on the commissioners' faces are faces themselves, faces of spirits of history, spirits-spectators. History (i.e. augmentation of ruins) is producing itself under their sight.

Charcoal on paper, five drawings 75X55 cm each one, 2016