South Golding More romantic than we thought. For more than four decades, her photographs have immortalized private, fleeting moments of intimacy, even as she continues to grapple with the complexities of messy, gnarled relationships. As if to underscore her love of love, Goldin had just been appointed to officiate the marriage.The artist is in Venice 59th Biennale when ukrainian artist Nikita Cardan proposed to his girlfriend and fellow artist, AntigonaGolding celebrated the couple’s first wedding on the eve of their dramatic indefinite separation – with the groom having to return to Ukraine before the bride took refuge in Paris.
Cardin is one of the artists included This Is Ukraine: Defending Freedom beside Maria PremachenkoTetyana Yablonska, and lesia homenko. The exhibition took place at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice, featuring an installation war diary, Yevgenia Belarus‘A powerful description of the Russian invasion. Goldin first became aware of Kadan—one of the rising stars of the Ukrainian art scene—in New York City while attending a reading of Beloruset’s diary, which she followed online.These events are war diary It was then taken to Venice for the Biennale to be exhibited alongside Nikita’s sculptures, both of which feature the book face war (Published by ISOLARII to coincide with the Biennale).
Cardan has been granted official immunity to leave Ukraine for 10 days and faces jail if he does not return. On his eighth night in Venice, he was invited to a dinner attended by various artistic personalities, including Nan Golding. As the night wore on, Cardan did not appear. Towards the end of the meal, he arrives at the party and announces that he has been put off because he has proposed to his girlfriend AntGonna, a controversial filmmaker and artist from Odessa. ISOLARII co-founder Sebastian Clark “Nan cautiously mentioned that she was ordained at Universal Life Church last week. She offered to marry them immediately,” recalled.
At 1:30 a.m., Goldin told Nikita and the assembled group to meet her at College Bridge at noon the next day, and assured them, “I’ll swear.” According to Clark, “Nan was in this spontaneous event. So much care and love was put into the moment.” He recalls how the famous artist spent the rest of the night working on wedding scenes in the film (including woman of the year1942 film starring Katharine Hepburn) Because she wrote a series of vows, it was the first time ever to officiate at a wedding.
“We woke up with a hangover and suddenly panicked about making two rings,” said Clark, who agreed to be the ring bearer and best man. A 20-minute sprint through central Venice followed to find the right ring, culminating in a makeshift wedding ring using a pair of antique spoons.
Wedding parties gather at the Academy – one of the city’s busiest and most iconic landmarks. “Nan was there holding the marriage license, which she got the week before, and it was kind of like showing it to everyone and making it official,” Clark told Dazed. “Then the crowd started to gather and someone shouted, ‘We love you, Nan!’ and she said, ‘Please go away. I’m officiating a wedding here. There’s a lovely vibe of something to come.'”
“I don’t want to call it a work of art, but it feels like a work of art” – Sebastian Clark
India Ennenga, ISOLARII co-founder, Explains: “That scene was amazing. The six of us were actually there for the wedding and the tourists gathered to try and figure out what was going on. Later, Nikita and Antigona were on the bridge. Kissed, totally in love, this group of Italian school kids passed by and were fascinated by them. It was really charming and lovely. We managed to find a bottle of champagne that we had opened and then people tried to get in the champagne and the kids tried to sneak a drink, It’s really beautiful.” Clark muses: “I don’t want to call it a work of art, but it feels like a work of art.”
Check out the gallery above for a glimpse of Nikita Kadan and AntiGonna’s wedding to Nan Goldin
