Indocile Bodies: Soviet and post-Soviet corporeality in the exhibition project at the Kmytiv Museum (ENG)

One of the methods used by contemporary Ukrainian artists and curators to actualize and preserve the cultural heritage of the Soviet period is to build a dialogue between the art of two eras. One example of this approach is the thematic exhibition “Indocile Bodies” at the Kmytiv Art Museum in 2019, curated by Nikita Kadan.

The exhibition is based on Soviet art from the museum’s collection, which contains almost no depictions of the naked body. Instead, it features numerous images of the body at work, the athletic body, the military body, and the body that demonstrates self-control and obedience. These works are placed in a polemical dialogue with those of contemporary Ukrainian artists, where the body becomes an instrument of transgression and the overcoming of disciplinary order.

The curator Nikita Kadan refers to the image of ‘obedient bodies’, which appeared in Michel Foucault’s book “Discipline and punish” in connection with the disciplinary practices of body control and student behavior at school, a soldier in the army, and a prisoner in prison. In Foucault’s description, “political anatomy” becomes, at the same time, a “mechanics of power”, creating systems of interdependence between obedience and social utility. Nowadays, queer theory (which is partly based on the ideas of Foucault) opens the way to a ‘disobedient body’ indifferent to external disciplinary regulation. A body that has overcome its former separation from intelligence, sensuality and political subjectivity, and which refuses to comply with the norms of conventional appearance and gender distribution.

In this exhibition, contemporary art exposes Soviet art, promotes a deep symbolic understanding, and contributes to the deconstruction of the ideological narratives of the former. It also shows important mutual influences on contemporary art, affirming the continuity of historical artistic development.