NADA House 2024

For NADA House 2024, Bahnhof presents a project by Kuril Chto (b. 1989). Originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia, the artist has been residing in Lisbon for several years, and two years ago moved to New York to pursue a Master’s Degree at the New York Academy of Art, which he was awarded in May.

The artist works in a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, ceramics, and sculpture. Navigating the media-saturated worlds of social networks, memes, news and advertising, he creates ironic and absurd narratives that often revolve around everyday objects.

Bahnhof’s presentation is the composition of works by Kuril Chto, a kind of an alloy of the harsh and absurd war reality that is penetrated by mundane necessities and the reminiscence of the island being the quiet harbor for military families.

The shown works are the continuation of the artist’s project “Goods” presented in Basel in 2022 as the reaction to the looting of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The peculiar variety of pillaging was characterized by the theft by Russian soldiers of basic household appliances and items, all then sent on by the delivery service across Russia’s far-flung regions. The washing machine has become, perhaps, the main symbol of the invasion of Ukraine, being a luxurious trophy for the soldier who has come to fight from the Russian countryside. 
By the power of the social unconscious, the washing machine turned not only into the paradoxical quintessence of robbery as a national idea or the desire to appropriate not only the territory of a sovereign state, but also the theft of the future from the younger generations inhabiting that country.

Kuril Chto in his past projects has repeatedly turned to images of the typical household items that shape our mundane reality. Through the depiction of the proposed domestic objects the artist raises the question of “the banality of evil”, described by Hannah Arendt – mindless obedience to laws that are not simply inhuman but directed against the very foundations of life, can only be resisted if set in opposition to critical thinking.