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Andrei Kuzkin
Was born in Moscow in 1989. In 2001 graduated from the Moscow State University of Printing Arts (faculty for graphical arts). A member of the Moscow Artists Union sience 2006. Works in different medias: graphics, painting, sculpture. Winner of the Innovation Prize (nomination “Book of the Year” in 2017, nomination “New Generation” in 2008) Winner of the Kandinsky Prize 2016 in nomination “Project of the Year”. Winner of the Soratnik award in 2009, 2010, 2011. Lives and works in Moscow
Prayers and Heroes
Andrey Kuzkin had been creating his work for 3 years. It is a kind of performative practice – a tribute that the author pays to the tragic history of the country, its innocent victims, its weaknesses and cruelties. All the figures in the installation are handmade and made of bread crumbs. The heads of the heroes are drenched with the blood of the artist. The choice of material is not accidental: bread, according to the artist, is the best material for the images of the human body – the body changing, perishable, suffering, and sooner or later it disappears.
The division of society into the prayers and the heroes is about the sacrifice and the social essence of heroism. So most people are ready to endure injustice, to suffer and to pray for the salvation of god or the king. And those who throughout history are destroyed by the machine of the state, can later be put on a pedestal, and heroized. The neglect of the individuality, the incredible cruelty and injustice, which is fill the history – all this becomes the material for the artist’s reflection.
