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Radvlad, the artist pseudonym of Vladimir Vidanovski (1996), works across photography, sound, video and performance. Digital visual culture and the queer community of which he is part strongly shape his practice. He focuses on creating new world views and identities, while exploring the fluidity of gender, often embodied by his own body. For his new work, Radvlad is particularly interested in the ways digital media simulate our reality, and in how fact and fiction effortlessly merge amid the rapid rise of AI technologies. He does not use artificial intelligence himself, instead manipulating his images by hand, drawing inspiration from the internet aesthetic of the late noughties.
The installation Reduce Artifacts (2022–ongoing) explores queerness, digital culture and the politics of ‘otherness’. For this project, Radvlad developed fictional 3D characters and, in collaboration with friends, created quasi-mythological figures such as witches, werewolves and anime characters, which he situates within everyday environments. The tension between the fairytale and the banality of ordinary life reveals how marginalized identities are cast as ‘other’ in daily life. By blending photography with 3D rendering, Radvlad creates an alienating in-between world that occupies a space between documentation and fantasy. Each portrayed character emerges from conversations about how it feels to be made into ‘the other’. In this way, Reduce Artifacts operates on two levels: as a portrait and as a shared perspective on the experiences of marginalized communities.
Written by Kelly-ann van Steveninck