Cheefan’ka

Project installation for Pinchuk Art Centre Prize 2015

In his artistic practice Melnitchenko primarily photographs male nudes, breaking taboos that exist in society and researching possibilities of being oneself.
His new installation, entitled a la russe Cheefanka (Chi Fan from Chinese means “to eat”) and designed as a typical Chinese snack-bar, embodies the life of the closed community of Ukrainians currently living and working in China, to which Sergey belongs at the moment. The installation is composed of two photographic series: Polaroids from China (2015) reflecting current environment of the artist and black and white photographs depicting amusements of the Ukrainian community, disintegrated and at the same time surrounded by the Chinese reality. The artist intervened the real Chinese newspapers with the photographs of the community questioning the possibilities of privacy and naturalness in the chaos of information richness of today.
(c) Pinchuk Art Centre

Exhibition view of project installation

Photos and collages used and specially made for a project