Veronika Kvitko

Veronika Kvitko (Vegesent) is a research-based installation artist who has exhibited mostly in Helsinki, Finland. Recent exhibition include solo features at Domus Historic Building and Eteisgalleria Olohuone as well as collective shows at Take Me Home Gallery and Katve Art Space. Veronika has won notable recognitions including the A' Design Award and the Vegan Choice Award.

What makes the portfolio of Veronika Kvitko so unusual is the application of deep research-based conceptual intent and narrative to ultra-minimalist execution. Typically, in minimalism, the art is essentially about design principles and purity. At the heart of Veronika’s practice is a critique of anthropocentrism, the belief humanity is at the center of universe and the purpose of nature is to serve and be subordinate to humankind. Growing up on an animal farm, where daily slaughter of animals was normalized, Veronika Kvitko’s installations are an extended narrative of her own personal biography. Her practice is at the core essentially a social commentary on the need for improved animal welfare as well as an elaborate criticism of collective and institutional systems of neglect. These apparatuses and constructs she creates often have sand applied to the surface and are just as much assemblages as they are installations in how she uses found objects or discarded material and creates art out of their structural form.

In works such a Portal, Brick Sample, Road, and Negative Value, the themes and conceptual intentions range from an interactive work which accepts coins through a centered slot criticising the lack of institutional financing of animal sanctuaries (Portal) to criticisms on intrinsic value structures. With Negative Value, a 50 Euro T-shirt is converted into a sandy, pigmentated artifact with the artist conveying criticism as to how society places high value on simple inanimate objects yet considers male male chicks, dairy calves, and bucks to be literally less than worthless, as they are considered by the food industry to be a negative economic value due to being unable to be consumed and requires resources and time to destroy and be disposed of. This dark, cynical criticism alludes to the dark underbelly in society with art which is direct and minimalist in nature. Brick Sample is a social critique regarding the putrid green color of the Wye River in the UK, which is influenced by pollution from chicken industrial farms. Essentially, the form of a brick with this cited color conveys the presentation and packaging of the chickens within the confines of a manufactured entity. In other words, both the pollution and the slaughter of chickens is manufactured and packaged to be presentable and appealing to an unwitting audience. Road is a commentary on industrial slaughterhouses as pathways which serve as both illusory perception and reality. Created as repurposed shipping containers, this assemblage installation depicts two ‘roads’, one is of a star-filled fantasy, the silver tube, and the other is the reality of blood and slaughter, the red tube. Put together as parallels, the work speaks to the difference between perceived notions and actuality regarding the cruelty of industrial slaughterhouses. 

Unwrapped (pictured above) is one of Veronika Kvitko’s signature pieces and conveys the cruelty governments apply to farm animals by recognizing them primarily by indications of herd numbers and production units. The crumbled up plastic on plexiglass conveys how farm animals are transparent entities in the eyes of ‘the system’. They exist in actuality but are invisible in perception, as the installation conveys through crumbled up transparent plastic frozen against plexiglass with luminous paint. 

In summary, Veronika Kvitko is an artist who represents immense complexity with minimal application, quite literally. Her heavily research-based constructs are presented as pure entities with maximum impact and no excess or fillers. She shaves off the non-essentials in art and presents a format which is straight-forward and thoroughly direct towards her nonfiction narratives and conceptual intentions. Veronika Kvitko can be regarded as a kind soul who cares deeply for the welfare of animals and uses the power of art to bridge important sociological understanding of how collective and institutional behavior creates destructive outcomes.

https://vegesent.com