Alevtina Kakhidze. Plants and People

Alevtina Kakhidze
Plants and People

Alevtina Kakhidze (b. 1973) is a Ukrainian artist of Ukrainian-Georgian descent. Her work primarily focuses on performance and drawing, but she also creates videos, installations, and texts. She lives in Muzychi, Ukraine, 26 kilometers from Kyiv, and grew up in the Donetsk region. She studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Her performances, writings, and drawings often explore the post-Soviet reality of her homeland. Kakhidze is a sharp observer of socio-political changes, and her drawings could be seen as a visual chronicle of Ukraine’s recent history—from the Maidan protests of 2013–14, in which she actively participated, through the years of Russia’s hybrid warfare (beginning in 2014), to the full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022, which continues to this day.

Kakhidze documents these dramatic events with the distance and objectivity of a scientist analyzing a system—or rather, multiple systems: legal, educational, colonial, consumerist, and systems of violence. She actively engages in contemporary discourses, often provoking significant debate. Her drawings created after February 24, 2022, frequently reflect on the cultural dynamics between Russia and Ukraine, going beyond the immediate realities of war to explore deeper themes within the history and culture of both nations, highlighting Russian colonialism and imperialism.

Kakhidze’s longstanding interest in plants has taken on a deeper significance in the context of war. She sees plants as some of the purest examples of pacifism on our planet; to her, they represent a model worthy of imitation but ultimately unattainable. As she writes in one of her works: “If I am wounded, I wish I could regenerate the way plants do.”

Curator: Monika Szewczyk
Coordination: Yulia Kostereva