Curated by Svitlana Biedarieva. Ongoing project.
This exhibition focuses on identity transformations and decolonizing practices in Ukrainian art as seen through the lens of cultural resistance. Between 2014 and 2023, Ukrainian art passed through several stages of reflection: from documentation and recording of the events to their critical interpretation through the creation of new emancipatory discourses in art.
The wartime resistance gives vast space for re-identification and change. The impact of this transition, coming at a cost of human lives and destruction, is yet to be evaluated. But since the early days of the invasion, artists have been conduits of change as they produced works reflecting on new reality and rethinking colonial memory and contested history, heading to decolonial release as a horizon of the long-awaited victory.
This exhibition interweaves artists’ texts, visual art, and audiovisual material in a multi-layered narrative that shows the complexity of the Ukrainian art scene in its entanglement with the questions of memory and its responses to ongoing trauma. It addresses the consequences of Ukrainian society’s exposure to military violence, the impact of bodily experiences of the war on identity transformations, and artistic reflections on the destruction of the built environment and war-caused natural disasters.
This is the first edition of the upcoming series of research-led exhibitions, where Ukrainian contemporary art is placed directly into an academic environment in the U.S. and globally. The aim of this project is to foster the production of critical and art historical texts about Ukrainian art, to bring visibility to Ukrainian wartime resistance through art, and to expand horizons of the ways and perspectives of research wiriting on the topic through the direct encounter with university communities.
Panel Discussion “Ukrainian Art After 2014: Resistance, Decoloniality, and Documentation of the War”, University of Kansas, Edgar Heap of Birds Gallery, 17 January 2024.
Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Vitaly Chernetsky, Alevtina Kakhidze. Moderated by Benjamin Rosenthal.
View the discussion here: https://www.facebook.com/KUDepartmentOfVisualArt/videos/745924967087633
Svitlana Biedarieva 