Nikita Shokhov

Nikita Shokhov (; born 1988) is a visual artist and filmmaker. In 2014, he received third prize from the World Press Photo awards in the Staged Portrait: Stories category.

Biography

Nikita Shokhov is the son of Russian painter, art critic, and associate professor at Tyumen State University Konstantin Shokhov. He was born in Kamensk-Uralsky, USSR. Despite an inherited interest in visual arts, he initially studied at Ural State Law University in Ekaterinburg. Immediately after that, he lost interest in the legal profession and decided to study photography and cinema. He joined the photography club at the Metenkov House Museum of Photography , attended workshops led by renowned photographer Sergey Rogozhkin, and attended cinematography classes at Sverdlovsk Film Studio. He then moved to Moscow to enroll in The Rodchenko Art School and continued his education at the documentary photography workshop under the guidance of Igor Mukhin. In the late 2010s, he continued his education at California Institute of the Arts and School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech.

Art practice

Shokhov works with both still and moving images. Through his art projects, he explores the duality of body and mind, myth and reality, human nature, religions, history, and culture. He works in collaboration with his spouse Anna Evtiugina who takes roles of co-author and producer, depending on the project.

Shokhov's photographs were published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Harper's Bazaar Art, l'Insensé, Openspace, Elle, Time Out and British Journal of Photography, L'Officiel Russia, L'Express, Courrier International, IL, China Newsweek, Calvert Journal, Colta, and YET magazine.

Shokhov's thesis project at the Rodchenko Art School, the series "Rublevka" (2012–2013), was a visual exploration of a prestigious residential area of the same name to the west of Moscow. Rublevka is where the residences of nouveau riche are located and also the place with the highest social stratification in Russia. In his photo report, Shokhov captured the new elite, the ordinary inhabitants, and the guest workers to highlight the threatening gap between extremely rich and incredibly poor.

The series "Black Sea" (2011–2012) was created at several Black Sea resorts, such as Sochi and Anapa, and was dedicated to Russian beach culture. It resembles Martin Parr's photobook The Last Resort (1986) that represented working-class vacationers in the UK, and photographs by Sergey Rogozhkin on Black Sea beaches in the 1980s.

In the series "Utrich", Shokhov combined documentary and staged photography methods to approach biblical motives. It was produced at Utrish national park on the northern shore of the Black Sea, which has been a popular spot among nudists since the 1980s. Vacationers from the nudist camps were invited as models.

The series "Children Personal Space" (2014) involved research on the living space of young people and the way they interact with it, with surreal scenarios shot in routine environments. He sampled the way of life of Russian people and their ties to national culture in the small towns of Bologoe (shot in 2014) and Pereslavl-Zalessky (shot in 2013), a Sep village in Udmurtia. In 2014, Shokhov took part in a large "Where Does the Motherland Begin?" national photographic project aimed to depict a variety of Russian traditions and overlapping of soviet and modern Russian culture.

In the series "Scan", (2013–2016) Shokhov remained within the documentary tradition but went beyond the boundaries of direct photography. In that formal experiment, he used a slit-scan photography technique to capture 40 seconds of reality in one image using a view camera with a Better Light scanning back. Therefore, the moving objects, such as cars and people, undergo the process of plastic deformation while still objects such as architecture and landscapes appear as expected. Photographs of the "Scan" series portray processions, such as Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Saint Patrick's Day in Boston, New York, and Washington, Victory parade, and communist demonstration in Moscow and Velikoretsky Sacred Procession in Kirov Oblast. With the use of this artistic technique, Shokhov added a new visual metaphor to the mass gathering, where individuality becomes blurred and distorted.

The series "Flaming Motors" was captured at the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) in Nizhny Novgorod. The title refers to the figurative name, given to new Soviet plants at the time of mass industrialization. The series depicts industrial life through the prism of human-robot interaction. It also romanticizes the industrial buildings, initially built for solely functional purposes, and the cities that surround them.

Visual installations and virtual environments

"The Last March" (2017) was a video installation created in collaboration with Russian-American artist Naum Medovoy. The exhibition in Moscow Museum of Modern Art presented Medovoy's graphic works, a film produced in memory of Soviet soldiers that were classified as missing in action, and the prisoners of war who were declared "Traitors to the Motherland" and sent to labor camps and Gulag. Shokhov presented two works. His film combined fragments of Medovoy's film with recently recorded footage of present-day Moscow and New York to highlight the gap between values of the mid-century and the present time. The second installation provided a contemporary interpretation of Medovoy's diaries and sketchbooks with a focus on women identity, stereotyping, and the tensions of daily life for a woman.

The project "Ice" (2015–2017) was an experimental film and immersive video installation by Shokhov, Andrey Kachalian, and Albina Mochryakova. It combined the features of narrative film, documentary film, and performance art. It explored concepts of carnivalesque, freedom, and physicality. The project was filmed at many nudist colonies at the Black Sea beaches of the Crimea peninsula with non-professional performers.

"Klaxon" (2017–2020) is a virtual reality experience that addresses questions of race and gender. The script combines a play by J. William Howe that explores the gender identity and Shokhov's research on racial identity.

Awards 2014: Third prize, World Press Photo award, Staged Portrait: Stories category for his Utrich series

Shows

Solo shows

2012 Empty Hills. The Space of Joy, Galerie Iragui, Moscow 2012 Sochi. City of the Future Olympic Games, White Nights Festival, Perm 2013 Black Sea Vacations (a Biennale "Fashion and Style in Photography event), Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow 2014 Moscow Nightlife (Moscow Biennale of Photography event) Zurab Tsereteli Gallery, Moscow 2015 Children: Personal Space, Gallery Peresvetov, Moscow 2015 Sacred Procession (Baltic Biennial of Photography event), State Art Gallery, Kaliningrad 2017 Ice (screening at Artdocfest film festival), Czech Cultural Center, Moscow. 2017 The Last March (collaboration with Naum Medovoy), Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow 2020 Scan | Klaxon, 11.12 Gallery, Moscow 2011 Life in Motion, International Center of Photography, New York 2012 The Stone Flower, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow 2013 Stability. Ghosts, Random gallery, Moscow 2013 Chernukha, RuArts gallery, Moscow 2013 The Happy End, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow 2013 What is Behind This Curtain?, Random Gallery, Moscow 2014 Twelve Thinking Photographers, Manifesta 10 parallel event, First Cadets' Corpus, St. Petersburg 2014 Moscow. Barocco, 4th Moscow International Biennale for young art collateral event, Triumph Gallery, Moscow 2014 Artistic Invention of Yourself and the Pure Enjoyment of Life and Love, Austrian Cultural Forum, Moscow 2014 Moskovia. Research, All-Russian Decorative Art Museum, Moscow 2014 Young, GUP Gallery, Amsterdam 2014 Where Motherland Begins, Museum of History of Moscow, Moscow 2015 Exhibition within the 5th Photoquai Biennale, Paris 2015 Hope (The 6th Moscow Biennale event), Moscow 2016 Ice (at Fada: House of Madness art show), The Watermill Center, Water Mill, New York 2018 Scan (8th Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art), Tashkent 2019 Darling Angel (an annual CalArts School of Film/Video Showcase), Redcat, Los Angeles 2019 Exhibition within the Anhydrite Biennale of Media Art, Germany 2019 Klaxon (exhibition within the CYFEST-12 in collaboration with Anna Evtiugina), Saint Petersburg 2020 CADAF Online