Kirill Demchev, nickname d-143, artist, sculptor and performer from Vitebsk, Belarus.

Kirill Demchev set himself and art a task in which he defined the question: how to renew the legacy of Malevich’s Vitebsk avant-garde and Suprematism in the 21st century, exactly almost 100 years later?

For the artist, the answer was the need to go beyond existing limitations. And this appeared as liberation: a work of art is no longer just an image on a plane or a good form of some sculpture, life itself becomes art and the artist himself is a work of art. Demchev strives to free art from materiality, so that it grows with life itself. To do this, he draws attention to the creative process itself, to the fact that all our actions are more important than any completed work.

Thus, Demchev developed a new direction in art, just like Malevich 100 years ago, and created a new folk avant-garde: NEVIDIVISM. Nevidivism (from the Russian word invisible), this is determined by the fact that art is invisible, since it is no longer found in things (objects), but in the very process of creativity. Therefore, Kirill Demchev, at his first exhibition in Poland, insisted that he could be creative in front of spectators who could also take part in it.

The artist is now building a house, an anthill, using plaster and garbage before your eyes. During the exhibition, the house will become larger and larger day by day, so much so that it can no longer be moved and will have to be destroyed. And garbage is everything that we throw away, everything that we and society no longer want to see. Or maybe something that we would like to take with us to where we go, but we can’t.

Another point of non-visivism should be explained here: it always strives to make visible the social position of those who are invisible in the society in which they live. So the performance raises two more questions: who builds an anthill so large that it can no longer be moved, but will have to be destroyed, and who throws and recycles the garbage?

The artist himself did not happily leave his homeland, Belarus, because it was no longer possible to develop his art there. When he left, he also threw out a lot of things there and left them, as well as his friends and relatives. He doesn’t know if he can return. Where is home, where is homeland? Why can't you carry him/her with you? That performance is dedicated to newcomers, migrants, everyone who had to go to another country, to a foreign city, leaving loved ones behind, sometimes not being able to take anything with them, because of war or for economic, political, environmental reasons.

Franz Basil

© – courtesy of Galeria Miejska Arsenał, translation: Marcin Turski