Alevtina Kakhidze / Алевтина Кахідзе
Alevtina Kakhidze was born in Eastern Ukraine. She's been living in Muzychi (near Kyiv) since 1995, except for two years that she spent at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (2004-2006). Kakhidze inherited her Georgian surname from her father and was raised within Russian culture, in its Soviet incarnation. Her self-declared multi-level cultural identity includes parts of Ukrainian, Georgian and West European mentalities. She has been an active and visible supporter of the Maidan Uprising in 2013-2014. The practice of Kakhidze is based on personal experiences and imagination, talking about consumer culture, gender, love, culture of protest, experience of war, everyday life, plants, and dogs. The information war between Ukraine and Russia, West and East, together with her multivalent personal biography, formed the complex basis of her work for Manifesta 10 Where The Wild Things Are/Ukraine within the Russian Law. In 2015 Kakhidze researched The Soviet-Finnish War, also called The Winter War, during a residency in HIAP, in order to create a link to the contemporary situation in Eastern Ukraine and the military involvement of Russia there. Also in 2015 Kakhidze participated in the 6th Moscow Biennale.