Blind Spot

Blind Spot by Mykola Ridnyi and Serhiy Zhadan consists of two distinct elements, poetry by Zhadan and a monumental printed image by Ridnyi. Together they form two sides of the same medal, two ways to see one story. Ridnyi has found the motif for his image on the Internet and has sprayed it over with black paint, leaving only a peephole that creates a limited, partially erased view of the original photograph. What remains is an abstraction of the reality and violence in the picture. Contrary to the black-sprayed image, the poems of Zhadan give a face to the violence. Each poem tells a personal story, drawing a portrait of both real and fictional figures living through the war in eastern Ukraine. Blind Spot attacks the way reality is simplified in the media and on the Internet, where images are used to tell stories but too often alienated from their real-life context.
Thus blind spots are created in the way we look upon the world, and our sense of reality is constructed through a selective view and limited knowledge. The sprayed image is a metaphor for the power of propaganda, a conscious act of erasing parts of the image to show only that which fits the story. The poems individualize the victims of violence, and in these combined approaches Blind Spot resists any narrow narratives that provoke the radicalization of thought.