MoMA post presents: Art, Resistance, and New Narratives in Response to the War in Ukraine

Artistic responses to the war in Ukraine, from the Maidan revolution, annexation of Crimea to Russian invasion in 2022. RSVP here.

In this evening artists, researchers, and curators will delve deeply into artistic responses to the war in Ukraine, looking at the period between the Maidan revolution—which was followed by the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbas in 2014—and the full-scale Russian invasion launched on February 24, 2022.

Artists in Ukraine have long been reacting to the war. However, their voices seem only to have been amplified when the recent, brutal invasion started. Art created during the past eight years, and these very recent reactions, are already creating a future archive of the present that both documents the atrocities and proposes new narratives of art history.

Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Ewa Sułek, Lesia Khomenko, Nikita Kadan.

Co-moderated by Paulina Pobocha, MoMA Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture and Inga Lāce, MoMA C-MAP Central and Eastern Europe Fellow.

This conversation initiated by the Polish Cultural Institute New York, is an act of urgency in resistance to Russian direct attack on Ukrainian cultural heritage. Speakers will reflect on narratives created by the artists and how have they shifted since the invasion this year. Can we use the framework of post-colonialism and decolonization to speak about art in Ukraine? Should we look in art history to understand the present and imagine a future beyond the violent events? While aspiring to think through those and other questions, the event will also be a forum for understanding how this research and these processes relate to museum practices examining historical and theoretical questions in relation to art history.

Researcher Ewa Sułek will expand on her proposition that what happened in the visual arts after 2014 can be called a “postcolonial turn”—a phenomenon based on healing and acceptance of history, and of the past in its hybrid form, without the imposition of imperial or national patterns. Art historian Svitlana Biedarieva will talk about the development and transformation of documentary practices in Ukrainian wartime art, analyzing works by Dana Kavelina, Vlada Ralko, Alevtina Kakhidze, and Yevgenia Belorusets. Artist Lesia Khomenko will discuss her practice, which is currently focused on ways of looking at the war and the relationship between digital archives and the materiality of painting. Nikita (Mykyta) Kadan will speak about Ukrainian avant-gardes and modernism, and their perception post-1991 and post-2014, as well as the (im)possibility of a “national avant-garde” and what looking at the avant-garde through a decolonial lens would mean.

post presents: Art, Resistance, and New Narratives in Response to the War in Ukraine is co-organized with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and cosponsored by the James Gallery at CUNY. Informative support is provided by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

Promotional support is provided by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.