Form of light 2011 | kadyrova EN

FORM of LIGHT

Peizazhna Lane, Kyiv, Ukraine. 2011

The history of the creation of the public sculpture Form of Light, which is conceptually part of the project Invisible Forms, is intertwined with the recent controversy surrounding construction on Peizazhna Lane in Kyiv – an important historical place where in the Middle Ages the ruling elite of Kyivan Rus’ built their noble stone palaces. As symbolic sites of power, Peizazhna Lane and the adjacent ruins of the Desiatynna Church constantly attract various forces, from religious institutions to construction companies, who contend for physical presence in the area in an attempt to substantiate their own claims to power.

They are meeting resistance from a number of civic and artistic initiatives who are striving to preserve Peizazhna Lane primarily as a park zone from which the community should not be pushed out by private capital. Still, few artistic

endeavors, even if they serve the noble purpose of preserving a park, meet with the approval of both the artistic community and the public at large. To this day the struggle for Peizazhna Lane is a litmus test that demonstrates the lack of effective mechanisms for a functioning civil society in Ukraine, where people often are not capable of engaging in public dialogue.

And so the massive, eight-ton concrete cone, visualizing the impalpable light seeming to effuse from a film production lamp, acquires additional connotations in the context of Kadyrova’s project Invisible Forms, whose works not only reveal the invisible, but also draw the viewer’s attention to how much that “invisible” encumbers our living space. The lamp “pours out” concrete light, thus exposing points of social tension related to questions of Ukrainian public space.

FORM of LIGHT 2011 Floodlight, metal frame, concrete Height 800 cm Peizazhna Lane, Kyiv