Fedir Tetyanych
Fedir Tetyanych worked at the intersection of cosmism, performance, cybernetics, and ecology-driven practice. His multifaceted oeuvre embodied a continued search for artistic freedom and euphoric unity with the universe. A native of Kniazhychi near Kyiv, he had early contact with land and nature, and against the backdrop of the armed conflict (as a child he was injured by a piece of a projectile), his idiosyncratic perception of rural cosmism and human responsibility for the surrounding world took form. Tetyanych worked against the constraints of various ideologies and disciplines. He was an author of
monumentalist mosaics and decorative panels in the Soviet era, a chronicler of Ukrainian indigenous cosmologies and Cossacks’ anarchist history, a joyous performer, writer of cosmist and ecological manifestos, egalitarian hoarder of objects and an activist who wished to turn landfill sites and factories into theatres. All these labels apply yet collectively fail to encompass Tetyanych’s nonconformist legacy and prolific output. In the 1960s, the artist began his first State commissions for monumental decorations in public space, which he often created using found items: discarded industrial waste, scraps of metal, cans, screws and shards of glass. These materials became prime matter for his future costumes and performances on the streets of Kyiv from the 1980s onwards. Tetyanych considered his whole life to be one single performance, but he was more informed by science-fiction literature, cybernetics and cycles of nature than by any of his contemporaries in the field of avant-garde art. In the 1970s, he developed his own version of ecologically-informed cosmism, stemming from an awareness of infinite unity with the universe and mutual interconnectedness, which he called Frypulia. According to him, humanity, even if eventually turned into radio waves or rays of light, would carry information about itself and reappear at any point of space and time. Of particular importance was his concept of the biotechnosphere – an autonomous unit for shelter, energy-storage and transportation. The artist made numerous drawings and watercolours imagining their future application, he also installed the actual models in public space; for example, by incorporating them into his State-commissioned monumentalist works. N.Si.
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