THE CHIPS: UKRAINIAN NAЇVE MOSAICS OF THE 1950-90S

A photobook The Chips: Ukrainian Naїve Mosaics of the 1950–90s by photographer Yevgen Nikiforov and art historian Polina Baitsym records a vanishing phenomenon on the periphery of art and public life. The archive, collected between 2013 and 2023 and conceived as a book in 2019, presents mosaics by unknown authors in a state of half-decay—when they have already lost their initial glow, are decaying, or are disappearing into the lower layers of facades and city panoramas. Naïve mosaics are often a mundane backdrop for local residents, or an uncomfortable and problematic material for the transformation process of public spaces. The book focuses on them as a phenomenon that raises questions about memory and space, past and present, self-expression and imitation, and captures the fragility of the monumental, which, like chips, eventually became crumbs at the bottom of the package.