Denys Nedoluzhenko, an artist from Odesa and a junior sergeant in the State Special Transport Service, participated in the "Art of Resistance" exhibition held from April 24 to 27 in Kyiv.
This exhibition is part of the "Book Country" festival and brings together artists who express their experiences of war and resistance through their art.
His series "Motorola 1917" exemplifies the deconstruction of Soviet and contemporary Russian imperial myths.
"Before mobilization, I was painting and working with ceramics to earn a living, but my service provided a new impetus for my creativity. During my service, I stumbled upon Soviet propaganda literature in the pre-conscription training office. That's when the idea was born: I imagined myself as a student of that time being forced to study the 'heroes' of the empire, and as a small act of resistance, I began to paint over these portraits, deconstructing the myth. Each piece became a form of protest and a documentation of our struggle," the artist shared.
Born in 1987 in the village of Chyzheve, Odesa region, he graduated from Odesa National University named after I.I. Mechnikov with a degree in microbiology and general virology. He has been participating in art exhibitions since 2018. He currently lives and works in Odesa, creating in the genres of painting, sculpture, and decorative ceramics with a focus on expressionism and neo-expressionism.
Meanwhile, Odesa hosted a posthumous exhibition of photographs titled "Lines of Fracture" by French photographer Matthieu Chazal, who spent nearly two decades documenting war around the Black and Mediterranean seas.
