Draft:Nikolay Karabinovych

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Nikolay Karabinovych
Николай Карабинович
Born(1988-09-19)September 19, 1988
Odesa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Other namesMykola Karabinovych, Nikolai Karabinovic
EducationOdesa University
Notable workThe voice of thine Silence (2018),
Even Further (2020)
The Story of the City Where Two Colors Disappeared (2023)
Websitewww.karabinovych.com


Nikolay Karabinovych (born 19 September 1988) is an artist and curator whose practice includes installation, film, video, performance, sculpture, collage, and sound. His work addresses themes of identity, belonging, and historical memory, often combining personal and familial narratives with broader social and political histories of Eastern Europe.[1] Karabinovych’s art deals with topics such as selfhood and faith, as well as humor and trauma. The artist often refers to music, which plays an important role in his practice.[2]

Biography

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Karabinovych earned an MA in Philosophy from Odesa University and later participated in international residency programmes, including the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent.[3] In 2017 he was an assistant curator of the 5th Odesa Biennale of Contemporary Art.[4]

Career

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Karabinovych’s works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (M HKA),[5] the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR),[6] MAXXI,[7] the Moderna Museet,[8] the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington,[9] the Steirischer Herbst festival,[10] and in the parallel programmes of the Venice Biennale (2022, 2024).

In 2023 Karabinovych was part of the curatorial team for As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The exhibition, described by critic Olexii Kuchanskyi in e-flux as exploring the “geopoetics of North Eurasia”—heterogeneous yet interconnected political and cultural contexts under oppressive regimes, from the Russian Empire through Soviet colonialism to contemporary Russian imperialism—presented works in discrete “monads,” each encapsulating narratives of colonialism, resistance, and artistic experimentation.[11]

In 2024, at the 60th Venice Biennale, The New York Times art critic Jason Farago described Karabinovych’s work Even Further as “an elegant, hazy video” that “rewrites the Ukrainian landscape as a crossroads of languages, religions and histories” in a way that resists exploitation “for the image of a nation, the thesis of a curator, or the vanity of a collector.”[12]

That same year, Karabinovych presented The Last Artwork about the War at Steirischer Herbst in Graz. Mousse Magazine wrote that the work “unfolds as a conversational meditation in a psychoanalyst’s office,” seeking to “cannibalize the ubiquitous idea of the war-art genre” while exploring the frustration and ambiguity of liberation “during and after conflict (and, crucially, within the self) via the lens of nationality and language.”[13]

Karabinovych also contributed to the fifth volume of the Biebao series featuring Ilia Zdanevich’s PhiloSophia and Letters to Morgan Philips Price, translated and edited by Thomas J. Kitson. The book concludes with Karabinovych’s text remixing PhiloSophia for the “new architecture of collective security” of today’s wars and empires, an intervention inspired by Zdanevich’s paradoxical graphomania that reworks centuries-old imperial narratives.[14]

Collaborations with Theatre

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Karabinovych has contributed as a video and visual artist to several theatre productions in Europe:

  • Rozdilovi (2014) – a multimedia performance of poetry by Serhiy Zhadan, presented in Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odesa, for which Karabinovych created the video art component.[15]
  • Bandera (Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, 2017) – video director of the performance, part of the series Mythen der Wirklichkeit exploring political mythologies.[16]
  • Was ist jüdische Musik? (Münchner Kammerspiele, 2022) – created video projections for the play written by Ukrainian playwright Anastasiia Kosodii, which interrogated questions of Jewish identity and cultural memory.[17]
  • Wie man mit Toten spricht – Як говорити з мертвими (Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2023) – provided the video design for this German- and Ukrainian-language play by Anastasiia Kosodii, which reflects on loss and memory during the war in Ukraine.[18]
  • On the War (Royal Court Theatre, London, 2022) – visual artist for a special staging of the Kyiv Theater of Playwrights, presented in solidarity with Ukrainian theatre during the Russian invasion.[19]

Exhibitions

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The following exhibitions are only a selection.

Solo exhibitions

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Group exhibitions

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  • 2025 – Borders are Nocturnal Animals, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania.[20][21]
  • 2025 – The Impermanent, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland.[22][23]
  • 2024 – From Ukraine: Dare to Dream, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition — Venice Biennale, Italy.[24]
  • 2023–2024 – Pickle Bar Presents, West Den Haag, Netherlands.[25][26]
  • 2023 – As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany.[27]
  • 2023 – 5th Kyiv Biennial, Augarten Contemporary, Vienna, Austria.[28][29]

Awards

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Karabinovych is a three-time laureate of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2018, 2020, 2022).[30]

References

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  1. ^ "Вітальність, захват, безумство, сюр – ось коло тем, з яким я працюю". LB.ua (in Ukrainian). 2019-07-12.
  2. ^ "Інтерв'ю з художником Миколою Карабіновичем". Vogue Ukraine (in Ukrainian). 27 December 2020.
  3. ^ "Nikolay Karabinovych". HISK.
  4. ^ "Team / 5 Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art". Archived from the original on 2019-03-17. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
  5. ^ "Karabinovych.jpg – Recent works on paper". M HKA.
  6. ^ "Imagine Ukraine". 2 June 2022.
  7. ^ "Our ship is a corsair schooner". 22 March 2024.
  8. ^ "A letter from the front".
  9. ^ "Future in the Past: An Artist Talk with Nikolay Karabinovych".
  10. ^ "Nikolay Karabinovych - steirischer herbst".
  11. ^ Kuchanskyi, Olexii (2023-12-13). "As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories". e-flux.
  12. ^ Farago, Jason (2024-04-24). "The Venice Biennale and the Art of Going Back". The New York Times.
  13. ^ "Horror Patriae – Steirischer Herbst 24". Mousse Magazine. 21 October 2024.
  14. ^ "Biebao 5". Rab-Rab Press.
  15. ^ UAModna – Rozdilovi multimedia project
  16. ^ Maxim Gorki Theater – Bandera
  17. ^ Münchner Kammerspiele – Was ist jüdische Musik?
  18. ^ NTM – Wie man mit Toten spricht, Video by Nikolay Karabinovych
  19. ^ Royal Court Theatre – On the War
  20. ^ "Borders are Nocturnal Animals". Contemporary Art Library.
  21. ^ "Borders are Nocturnal Animals – exhibition guide (PDF)" (PDF). Contemporary Art Library.
  22. ^ "The Impermanent". Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
  23. ^ "Nikolay Karabinovych". Artfacts.
  24. ^ "From Ukraine: Dare to Dream". PinchukArtCentre.
  25. ^ "Slavs and Tatars at West Den Haag – Review". Metropolis M.
  26. ^ "Pickle Bar Presents at West, Den Haag". Pickle Bar.
  27. ^ "As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories". HKW.
  28. ^ "Nikolay Karabinovych – Participant". Kyiv Biennial.
  29. ^ "Kyiv Biennial presents artists, partners and venues". Biennial Foundation.
  30. ^ Lozhkina, Alisa (2024). The Art of Ukraine. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500297780.
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