Untitled 2022

Alevtyna Kakhidze made this untitled piece, a drawing really, on paper, sometime around January 2021. The stark black lines against the white, punctuated by flares of red, give it a feeling of immediacy, like a note hastily scribbled but charged with urgency. You get the feeling that the artmaking process is immediate to the artist, a process of recording and remembering. There’s a tension between the graphic, almost architectural depiction of what I think is a courthouse, and the handwritten text below. That text, in Ukrainian, is rendered in two colours, black and red, and the red seems to mark points of emphasis. Look at how the words tumble down the page, some bolder than others, some leaning, some upright. And that splash of red at the bottom, it’s almost like a signature, a bold stroke declaring “prava,” or rights. This piece reminds me of the work of Corita Kent, the pop artist and nun who used text and image to convey powerful messages of social justice. Both artists remind us that art can be a form of protest, a way to speak truth to power, and a powerful means of communication that embraces the beauty of imperfection.