**SHOW EXTENDED TO FEB 23**
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 war as adversarial territory 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.

Participating artists: Piotr Armianovski, Yevgenia Belorusets, Alevtina Kakhidze, Dana Kavelina, Maria Kulikovska, Olia Mykhailiuk, and Elena Subach. Curated by Svitlana Biedarieva.
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Panel discussion: JAN 17, 2024, 6P - 7:30P
"Ukrainian Art after 2014: Resistance, Decoloniality, and Documentation of the War"

This panel discussion will bring together the curator of the exhibition, art historian Svitlana Biedarieva, Vitaly Chernetsky, Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Literatures and Languages at the KU Slavic Department, and artist Alevtina Kakhidze, for a discussion on the transformations that occurred in Ukrainian art practices as a result of Ukrainian resistance to the war. The panel will be moderated by Benjamin Rosenthal, Associate Professor of Expanded Media at KU.
The discussion will touch upon questions of decolonial transformations, resilience, and the changing role of art in documenting and reflecting on the war. The year 2014 initiated a documentary turn in Ukrainian art practices, with the necessity of recording and interpreting the effects of the war, destruction, and displacement, but also the solidarity and heartfelt anti-colonial resistance of Ukrainian society. In 2022, the beginning of the full-scale invasion gave way to a turn to the genre of personal chronicles, when artists, as nearly all Ukrainians, were immersed in the violence of the full-scale invasion. Addressing the works in the exhibition created by prominent Ukrainian artists, the panel discussion participants will analyze the development of Ukrainian contemporary art as a socially engaged practice and address the visual forms of representing resistance to the neocolonial war.

The panel will be in-person, as well as live-streamed on Facebook: https://fb.me/e/Wa2OmKnD