David Chichkan, an artist well-known in Ukraine for making explicitly political work that occasionally faced censorship, has died at 39. The Ukrainian culture ministry said that his heart stopped after he was wounded in battle against Russian troops.
Chichkan made national headlines in Ukraine for mounting shows through the research initiative Libertarian Club of Underground Dialectics, which he founded in 2014. The initiative produced art about right-wing ideology and efforts to combat it.
In 2017, in Kyiv, Chichkan staged an exhibition about the 2013–14 Maidan revolution, in which the artist participated. The revolution was intended as a protest against President Viktor Yanukovych, who, in deciding not to sign a trade agreement with the European Union, brought Ukraine closer to Russia. Ultimately, the revolution culminated in Yanukovych’s ouster.
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Once Chichkan’s show went on view, bloggers began to savage it—and ultimately spurred on real-life destruction. Masked people entered the show and vandalized nearly all of the works. “Many argue that it wasn’t neo-Nazis who destroyed the exhibition, but Kremlin agents,” Chichkan said at the time. “But my exhibition is partly about the fact that neo-Nazis are acting on behalf of the Kremlin. This contradiction is easy to dismiss.”
He was prone to making bold statements such as this one, showing little fear in the face of oppressive forces. An avowed anarchist and Communist, he remained politically active for all of his career.
Born in 1986 in Kyiv to a family of artists, Chichkan produced paintings intended for galleries and posters meant for dissemination on city streets. Much of his art was about Ukrainian culture, aspects of which he appropriated and then subverted.
For one series known as “Alternative Hryvnias,” begun in 2021, Chichkan reproduced actual Ukrainian banknotes featuring figures such as the writers Ivan Franko and Lesya Ukrainka. But his remade banknotes also included some people who do not appear on real Ukrainian hryvnia, including Mykhailo Drahomanov, a 19th-century economist whose socialist theories informed Ukraine’s 1991 political constitution.
Another series, from 2020–22, took the form of wreaths that utilized the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag. Entitled “Ribbons and Triangles,” the series also features three more hues chosen by Chichkan: “black corresponds to the idea of anti-authoritarianism and decentralism; purple represents feminism and cultural progress; red refers to social equality and direct democracy,” per the M HKA museum in Antwerp, which owns pieces from the series.
As recently as last year, Chichkan continued to face pushback in Ukraine. In 2024, the Odesa National Art Museum canceled his solo show after some alleged that he had distorted Ukrainian military history in prior pieces. “I am a bearer of anti-authoritarian leftist views,” Chichkan told Suspilne, a Ukrainian broadcasting company, in response. “Accordingly, those who hold right-wing authoritarian views try to hinder my work; to do this, they deliberately misinterpret my output.”
According to the Kyiv Independent, Chichkan had attempted to enlist in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022, the year that Russia invaded Ukraine, but he was unable to do so for health reasons. Finally, in 2024, he was able to do so and selected a role as a mortar operator.
While some may have found it odd that an anarchist would enlist in the Armed Forces, Chichkan appeared to view the decision as being consistent with his antiauthoritarian views. On Instagram, he posted watercolors depicting other soldiers he described as being antiauthoritarian. One painting shows troops waving the anarchist flag; Chichkan noted that it was only a partial view, representing just 10 percent of the antiauthoritarian soldiers he encountered. “Someday I will draw all 100%,” he wrote.