“The Battle Over Mazepa” conceptualises the historical significance and contemporary perception of Ivan Mazeppa, a political and military leader of the Zaporizhian Sich and Left-bank Ukraine in the late-17th and early-18th century. Addressing codes of hip-hop culture, Ridnyi borrows the popular form of a rap battle to collide two great works of world literature associated with this historical figure: “Mazeppa” by Lord Byron in 1819 and “Poltava” by Alexander Pushkin in 1828–29. While Byron envisions Mazeppa as a romantic hero, seized by love, Pushkin portrays him as a traitor in accordance with the colonial attitude of the Russian Empire. Highlighting the confrontation of these two texts, Ridnyi invited four rappers from different national and cultural backgrounds to write and perform their response to the poets’ lyrics.
Biography
Mykola Ridnyi was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Currently he lives and works in Berlin where he holds a guest professorship for multimedia art at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). He is an author of films, photography series and installations in public space. His way of reflection social and political reality draws on the contrast between fragility and resilience of individual stories and collective histories. The body of his work created withing the last decade address the question of how to talk about violence and war but not multiply its brutality in the visual language.
Ridnyi’s works has been shown in Venice biennial for contemporary art, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Centre for art and media in Karlsruhe, Transmediale in Berlin, Museums for contemporary art in Leipzig and Warsaw among the other places.
