For conceptual artist Taras Polataiko, the idea is primary and the medium is the mode of its conveyance. Consequently, his work takes on many forms from painting, photography, video and performance, to cultural and political interventions in response to historical events. Through his manifold manipulations, Polataiko has achieved a conceptually rigorous and thematically cohesive practice concerned with notions of rupture and repair.

Polataiko studied painting, art history, and philosophy at the Moscow State Stroganov University of Fine and Industrial Arts, moving to Canada in 1989 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree. Polataiko’s own experience of displacement, as a Ukrainian Canadian is central to recurrent themes of cultural conflict and translation in his work. For his celebrated piece Cradle (1996), Polataiko traveled to the Chernobyl alienation zone, exposed himself to radioactivity, and did a full blood transfusion upon his return to Canada. This blood became a core element of an installation, which dealt with the issue of contamination as the imperceptible element. Here exposure is a means of addressing the past, thereby resolving the future through dialogue and awareness.

Polataiko’s most recent works revisit symbolic moments of cultural genocide, addressing historical erasure through investigation and documentation. Kyiv Classical (2008) details the artist’s inquiry into the disappearance of a commemorative plaque marking the site in Bad Ems (Germany) where Russian Czar Alexander II signed a secret edict banning the use of the Ukrainian language in 1876. Polataiko drew attention to the plaque’s absence by coating its place with invisible neon paint that brightly glowed at night – and as result of his intervention, the plaque was eventually replaced. Polataiko’s concern with cultural oppression led to his collaboration with the Kwakiutl Band Council to produce In the Land of the Head Hunters (2008). The project documents a screening of Edward Curtis’s eponymous film for the descendants of the cast on the Kwakiutl reserve in the north of Vancouver Island. Curtis hired Kwakiutl people to enact the lives of their ancestors as they were before the contact with Europeans. In these works, Polataiko investigates the ideological forces that effect what remains and what is erased from historical memory.

Polataiko’s solo exhibitions include: the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; Sable-Castelli Gallery (Toronto); Priska C. Juschka Fine Art; Ukrainian Institute of America (New York); Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral (Frankfurt, Germany); Winnipeg Art Gallery; Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw); Soros International Center for Contemporary Art (Kyiv); Diane Farris Gallery (Vancouver); Art Gallery of Hamilton; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; MacKenzie Art Gallery; Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina) and Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon).

His group exhibitions include the Musée d’Art Contemporain (Montreal); Lombard-Freid Projects; Shroeder Romero Gallery; Sidney Mishkin Gallery (all New York); Antoni Tapies Foundation (Barcelona); CAAM (Las Palmas); Artspace (Sydney); Artspeak Gallery (Vancouver); National Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade); National Museum of Art (Lithuania); Museum London (London) and MacMaster Art Gallery (Hamilton). In 2002 Polataiko represented Ukraine at the 25th São Paulo Biennale. In 2009, he participated in the International Incheon Biennale in South Korea and Volta 5: Age of Anxiety in Basel, Switzerland. His upcoming exhibitions include Priska C. Juschka Fine Art (New York), Pulse Miami, Axis Gallery (Sacramento) and Galerie U7 (Frankfurt). He is currently based in Kyiv, Ukraine.