Film &Video
Sculpture
Mixed Media
Ant Manufactory
2011
Installation. Consist of three parts:
“Wheel”, rubber, d = 220 cm
“Stand of Working Class Fame”, concrete, 80 x 220 x 50 cm
«Anthill», SD video, 2’41’’
Ant Manufactory is the symbolic name for an industrial department at a quarry responsible for the extraction of iron ore. This department undertakes the most difficult and risky work involved in the delivery of natural materials from the earth’s core to the surface. The largest object in the installation is a human sized wheel from the workers’ track. Working this industry is a vicious circle: people who are born into workers’ towns inevitably go to work on a carrier, motivated by the guarantee of a stable salary. The promise of economic benefits to the worker and his family then guarantees the future of the industry.
The sculpture “Stand of Working Class Fame” shows real prototype usual for industrial zones but in reduced scale. It manifests the fact that the once all pervasive social symbol of the working class hero has faded. The absence of portraits hanging over this object further underlines this shift.
The video work “Anthill” depicts the settlement of “worker ants”. It refers to the functioning system of industrial mono-town where most of population work on one plant from generation to generation. “Slaves” of ants perform in the nest of the “slave holder” the same work as they could do in their own nest, thus working for the benefit of someone else's tribe. Only slightly differently do the proletarian masses work for the gain of the few at the top, risking more than others to avoid being crushed under the wheel of an economic system controlled by the political and business elite in the name of their own interests.
Mykola Ridnyi
Installation views:
PinchukArtCentre Prize, exhibition of shortlisted artists, 2011. Photo: Serhiy Illiyn, Mykola Ridnyi