Mykola Ridnyj

Born 1985 in Kharkiv. Creates installations, objects and video works. Member of the artist collective SOSka, active since 2005, with a focus on social and political issues.The collective-laboratory became a platform for the artists’ development and filled the role of government institutions, (of which there were none). Ridnyj was shortlisted for the Pinchuk Art Prize for young Ukrainian artists in 2009 (alongside the collective SOSka) and in 2011 (individually).

Dima is a record of the artist’s interview with the eponymous Dima, an ex-policeman who abandoned the police service and works as a stonemason. Dima is an idealist – his service in the police was motivated by his willingness to fight evil. Yet, this experience left him disappointed with the lawlessness and corruption that he witnessed. During the conversation, he talks about the deficiencies of the system and the mechanisms that can easily turn a victim into a suspect, while they can also turn officers of the authorities into people whose aim is not to administer justice but to add an extra 20 hryvnias to their meagre salaries. Dima believes that only a civic protest can counter the decay of the system. This goal cannot be achieved through the law, which has long been dysfunctional.

Ridnyj’s work was created just before the beginning of the Maidan protests. The video shows that the sense of the imminence of those events was common among the citizens of Ukraine – and corresponded to the conviction that authorities that disregard the needs of the people, and deprive them of their basic rights and dignity, need to be removed. However, as Dima summarises, the system won’t change by itself. People need to take to the streets and change it.