Sergey Kishchenko is an interdisciplinary artist based in Venice, working across performance, video, photography, installation and media art. His practice investigates memory, migration, ecology and the transformation of cultural identities in contexts of displacement, while critically examining the democratic ideals, illusions and myths that shaped post-Soviet Russia and their contemporary reinterpretations.

Originally trained in Theatre Arts and the Economics of Culture, Kishchenko studied acting and production at the Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow before fully dedicating himself to artistic practice. He continued his education at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and the MediaArtLab Open School in Moscow, and completed an internship at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has also participated in international residencies, including residency.ch in Bern, Switzerland.

Kishchenko constructs immersive environments using a wide range of materials, merging performance with visual and media-based practices. His long-term projects—such as Duck Test, Observation Journal, and Temple of Venus—explore the porous boundaries between personal narrative, historical archives and speculative mythology. Through these works, he challenges viewers to reassess inherited cultural symbols and to reflect on their relationship to contemporary mythology and media reality.

The Duck Test is a long-term artistic project by Sergey Kishchenko, which is based on the well-known principle of abductive reasoning: ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.’ In Kishchenko’s work, the duck is not a character, but a testing device – a hybrid figure through which historical roles, ideological positions, and personal biographies are explored and examined. For the artist, the Duck Test has become a fundamental approach to thinking about art and examining what it means to be an artist. Each iteration is a new configuration of this method, not a sequel. The numbering does not follow a linear chronology, but rather reflects a constellation of experiments unfolding across different temporal and geographical contexts.

While Duck Test No. 4 (Cherry) focused on the collapse of industrial and political utopias within the ruins of the ZIL plant in Moscow, Duck Test No. 5 (Displacement) shifts the focus to the contemporary issue of migration and the unstable reconstruction of the self.

In this piece, the protagonist – a Duck-man hybrid – appears on the deserted coastline of Lido Island. Carrying a suitcase, he moves along the sea dyke and the narrow strip of land between the water and the shore, as if entering a territory that is both real and mythological. The familiar landscape of dunes, wind, military remnants and the Adriatic horizon is transformed into a threshold space: a zone of arrival and uncertainty where identity must be renegotiated.

In this work the Duck is no longer a detached observer wandering through historical ruins. It arrives as a displaced subject, echoing the trajectories of countless migrants crossing seas and borders. However, the narrative avoids documentary realism. Instead, the journey unfolds as a layered temporal experience: each step along the shore triggers fragments of memory, previous lives, and imagined pasts. The Duck carries not only a suitcase but also a multiplicity of identities accumulated across different historical and personal timelines. The movement from the empty coastline toward Venice introduces a subtle theatrical dimension. Venice appears not as a picturesque destination but as a stage where histories overlap: a former maritime empire, a museum-city, a contemporary refuge. Entering its urban fabric, the Duck becomes both performer and witness, moving between visibility and anonymity. The city functions as a living archive, absorbing the presence of the newcomer while simultaneously dissolving it.

Hortus Conclusus Art Exhibition in Venice (2023)