The artist David Chichkan has been killed fighting on the frontline of Ukraine-Russia war. Chichkan helping to repel a Russian infantry assault in the Zaporizhia area in the southeast of Ukraine.
Chichkan rose to prominence with his uncompromising anarchist critique of Ukrainian society, catalysed by what he described as the ‘transformative potential’ of the Maidan revolution.
In 2022 his solo exhibition Ribbons and Triangles at Lviv Municipal Art Center was vandalised by a group of unidentified, right-wing activists unhappy with Chichkan’s alteration of the Ukrainian blue and yellow flag, Ukrainian embroidery, and elements of traditional costume to include other, more revolutionary colours. Black, in Chichkan’s hands, denoted the idea of anti-authoritarianism and decentralism; purple, represented feminism; and red was used to refer to social equality and direct democracy. In the same show, the artist imagined two new associations for a reformed Ukraine, hanging banners for the speculative anarchist workers’ associations ‘The Network of Social Revolution Groups’ and ‘Coordination of the Initiatives of the Emancipation of Labour’.
One of Chichkan’s earlier shows, Lost Opportunity at the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv, a 2017 exhibition of ten drawings critiquing the legacy of Maidan, was also vandalised. Eight of the works were destroyed and a security guard injured by a group of masked men. The same year his work was shown at the Fifth Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art.
Chichkan comes from a long line of artists. He was the son of Illya Chichkan, a representative of the Ukrainian New Wave and a member of the Paris Commune; the grandson of the nonconformist artist Arkadiy Chichkan; and the great-grandson of Ukrainian Soviet socialist realist painter Leonid Chichkan.
Despite his anarchist beliefs, Chichkan entered the armed forces to defend Ukraine against what he saw as the great foe of Russia, a dichotomy he investigated in works such as the 2023 line drawing of political comrades in fatigues Anti‐authoritarians and anti‐authoritarian leftists in the army of Ukraine.
