MIAMI, FLA.- PULSE Contemporary Art Fair announced Zhanna Kadyrova has received the 2018 Miami Beach PULSE PRIZE, a jury-awarded, cash grant of $2,500 given directly to an artist of distinction, exhibiting in a SOLO booth at the fair.
For the fourteenth edition of PULSE Miami Beach, led by the fairs director, Katelijne De Backer, Zhanna Kadyrova was selected by a jury of emerging and established authorities in the industry, including Kimberly Drew, Writer and Independent Curator; Cristina Favretto, Head of Special Collections at University of Miami; Jennifer Inacio, Curator at Perez Art Museum Miami; Rosa Lowinger, Independent Curator; Zoe Lukov, Curator at Faena Art; Leilani Lynch, Curator at Bass Museum of Art; and Vere Van Gool, Associate Director of IdeasCity at New Museum who says its exciting to join the PULSE Jury and celebrate a diverse group of contemporary artists who convey their inner-worlds through painting, performance, new media, and installation, Leilani Lynch concurred that its always a pleasure to see how PULSE maintains a robust group of artists working in diverse media - PRIZE is a wonderful platform, and Jennifer Inacio continued on the 2018 winner, that she loves the creativity and aesthetics of Zhanna Kadyrovas work - she uses a fun and interactive method to expose the complexity of the value of art and its commodity quality.
Represented by the Ukrainian Voloshyn Gallery, a new PULSE Miami Beach exhibitor, Voloshyn was founded in 2016 by Max and Julia Voloshyn, specializing in contemporary art. It showcases a broad range of media in contemporary art, hosting solo and group exhibitions, fostering the integration of Ukrainian art into global cultural processes, representing its artists at international art fairs and shows in Europe and the US. Voloshyn Gallery aims to discover exceptional talent, with particular focus on emerging and mid-career artists.
Based in Kiev, artist and sculptor Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981) works in the tradition of site specific art creating objects, installations, mosaic and sculpture. Her art is mainly aimed at changing the face of a city and its urban character. According to the artist, it gives the opportunity to interact with a city all the time getting to know it better and quite often her projects are in crucial dependency on outer environment that is physical space as well as social context.
At PULSE, Kadyrova presents her latest works in a performative piece titled Market standing at her makeshift stand as a saleswoman selling art objects by weight priced by 1gram for $1. She recreates the recognizable kiosk food products with accoutrements including mechanical scales, carts of vegetables, and a filament lamp illuminating the bright-blue tent stretched on a metal frame from within. The selection of goods are typical of street vendors: watermelons, zucchinis, eggplants, eggs, hams and sausages. The artist manufactured them of heavyweight construction materials: ceramic tiles, cement, concrete and natural stone. This is a site-specific installation embedded in the context of an art fair as a site of market relations.
The nominees for the 2018 PULSE PRIZE included artists Miya Ando (Sundaram Tagore Gallery), Thomas Broadbent (Front Room Gallery), Jacob Gils (In The Gallery), Louis Granet (Neumann Wolfson Art), Domenico Grenci (NUOVA GALLERIA MORONE), Joseph Guay (HATHAWAY), Juliane Hundertmark (Heissingsart), Kevan Jenson (Gibson Art Projects), Zhanna Kadyrova (Voloshyn Gallery), Charlotte Keates (Arusha Gallery), Shai Kremer (Julie M Gallery), Richard Kurtz (Esperanza Projects), Rafa Macarron (Allouche Gallery), Kal Mansur (reference: contemporary), Armando Mariño (COATES & SCARRY), Pierre-Luc Poujol (ARTELITE), Aristotle Roufanis (Momentum Fine Art), Winnie Truong (VIVIANEART).
Zhanna joins a list of notable past winners including most recently Tony Gum of Christopher Moller Gallery who presented a series of five large photographic portraits of considered perspectives to the meta-narratives of an ever-changing world at PULSE Miami Beach 2017.