During the first two months of the war, they all have acquired new social statuses. Now they are internally displaced persons, members of Territorial Defense, victims of shelling, volunteers. We want to ask every one of them will tell about their own ways of surviving and returning to art. Our conversations will become both researches and reflections: it’s hard to find time for an introspection and self-reflection, when you’re in the middle of an endless informational and emotional storm of the first month of the war. Following their everyday life and creative process, we will try to find an answer to the main questions: what is the place of an artist in the country at war? What is art capable of in time of war? And how can personal creativity exist in a society that is completely on the military rails?
The protagonists of our project are well-known internationally conceptual artists Alevtina Kakhidze and Aleksander Krolikowski, painters Taras Polataiko, Olesia Dzhuraieva, and Anton Logov, caricaturist Oleh Smal, writer Lyubko Deresh, composer Alexey Shmurak, and others.
Team:
Idea: Pavlo Lypa
Producers: Serhiy Malyarchuk, Kostiantyn Kliatskin
Directors: Pavlo Lypa, Kostiantyn Kliatskin, Oleg Chorny, Illya Egorov, Ganna Iaroshevych, Kristina Lyulchenko, Ivan Sautkin
Cinematographer: Danylo Chuprin, Pavlo Lypa, Serhii Stetsenko, Denys Tokarev, Illya Egorov, Ivan Sautkin, Valeria Pavlichuk
Music: Anton Baibakov
Sound editors: Vasyl Yavtushenko, Pavlo Melnyk, Andrii Ryzhov, Anton Brzestovski
Editing: Pavlo Lypa, Denys Tokarev, Kostiantyn Kliatskin, Illya Egorov, Ivan Sautkin, Henadii Khmaruk
Copywriters: Maria Balabanova, Stanislav Vasilyev
Art consultant: Kateryna Lypa
Design: Julia Kunshikova
Alevtina Kakhidze is a world-renowned Ukrainian conceptual artist, performer, curator, and designer.
She witnessed the beginning of the Russian invasion at her home in the Kyiv region. Observing the advance of the Russian invaders, and later the liberation of the territories, she reflects her emotions and thoughts through art.
Print Workshop Lithography 30 is the only independent lithography studio in Ukraine. It was founded by three graphic painters from Kyiv – Taras Kobliuk, Nina Savenko, and Alisa Hots.
After the war began, they left Kyiv for a while, and then returned and started to create.
How did their art change? How can you put your pain on paper? And what should you tell with your paintings?
Svitlana Povaliayeva is a Ukrainian writer, poet, and activist. Since the first day of the Russian attack on Ukraine, her two sons joined the Territorial Defense forces. She stayed in Kyiv, volunteering and trying to reflect her emotions through poetry.
After her younger son, famous local activist Roman Ratushny, died on the frontline, she managed to continue her work – both social and artistic.
For many years, graphic painter Andriy Budnyk taught graphic design at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. After the 24th of February, he with his family left Kyiv and took shelter in a small town in the Zhytomyr region.
Andriy kept close ties with his students even during the hardest times, staying in touch with them on Zoom. Some students were in the occupied territories, some were hiding from shelling in basements. But they never stopped creating.
Together they started an online graphic project where both the teacher and the students created posters, reflecting their artistic views on the war.
Kateryna Kosianenko is a well-known painter from Kyiv. Her works went on display in many European cities; she won awards at the Salone d’Autumne in Paris, France, and the International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Florence.
When the war began, she spent two weeks in Kyiv under heavy shelling. She managed to flee to the western part of Ukraine and set up a new studio.
Why does she have an emotional connection with apartment buildings, and why sincerity is important for a painter?
Viacheslav Snisarenko is an award-winning graphic artist from Kyiv. His works went on display in Ukraine, Czech Republic, Spain and Japan.
Before the war, he observed Ukrainian military parades from the rooftop of his studio at Khreshchatyk street. Now, he listens to air raid alarms, observes the capitol of the country at war, and attends a little roof garden.
He told us about etching, antidotes to Russian propaganda, and the urge to create.
Alexander Krolikowski is a Ukrainian conceptual artist. Born in Donetsk, he became an artist in Crimea and now lives in Kyiv region, in Vyshhorod. He says that for most he’s an alien, and that’s OK.
How to take pictures of Earth, what postmodernism leads to, and how to bear volunteering in the morgue – see in this video!
Olesya Dzhurayeva is a world-renowned print artist from Kyiv. Her linocuts were at exhibitions all over the world – from Peru to Denmark, from Japan to the USA.
Her works are usually complex and rich in detail. But she had discovered a cleaner, simpler visual language once she had to move from Kyiv to a village in the Cherkasy region. Olesya used only wood and soil, dedicating these artworks to Ukrainian land.
Alexey Shmurak is a composer and sound artist from Kyiv. He explores classical, contemporary classical, and experimental music, creates performances and provides a course about understanding music.
How to explain contemporary classical music, why there is no dialog without an understanding of the context, and what means national identity for a composer – watch the video!
Anton Logov is a contemporary artist who uses mixed media in his installations, videos and paintings. Together with his family, he evacuated from Kyiv to a village in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.
Now his works are all about the war and the Ukrainian resilience. For those Anton often uses bits of packaging he has handy, to remind about the hardships of war in both theme and material.
Taras Polataiko is a Ukrainian-Canadian conceptual artist. He returned to his home city of Chernivtsi in 2014, after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. There he founded the first contemporary art center in the city – Bunker.
How to turn a gallery into a volunteer center and collect aid for refugees and the military? Could you really heal with art? And how could seemingly sensible people holding atrociously unethical positions out of pacifism – see in the new video!
Oleh Smal is famous in Ukraine and abroad caricaturist.
The war motivated him to focus on political satire and on uniting Ukrainian caricaturists to oppose Russian propaganda.
Mykhaylo Bokotey is an artist and curator from Lviv. He works with decorative arts, mainly with blown glass.
How to save the unique local tradition of blown glass? How to hold an international symposium during the war, online and without light? And what means art for an artist?
Lyubko Deresh is a renowned Ukrainian writer, his books were translated into German, Polish, Italian, Serbian and more. He began his writing career at 15 and quickly became popular.
Deresh likes to explore the depth of human mind. Nowadays, he focuses on exploring the new developments in the Ukrainian psychic that surfaced since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Matvei Vaisberg’s artworks can be found in museums and galleries in Kyiv, Vilnius, Chicago, Berlin, Berkeley and many other cities, as well as in private collections around the world.
How a hundred of sheets of black paper can inspire a new art project? How ancient Greek statues and red lines combine? What is contemporary art, for real?
Oleksiy Sai is a Ukrainian artist, teacher, and social activist. He created his own art technique – painting in the Excel office program. From the first day of the Russian aggression, he began fighting on the cultural frontline, making posters, videos, and other artworks about the war.
His video “6400 frames” edited from photo evidence of Russian war crimes was shown in the galleries of the European Parliament, the British Parliament, NATO headquarters, the UN, and other institutions.
Olha Pilyuhina is a Ukrainian artist whose main field of work is weaving. She is a bearer of the unique carpet weaving traditions of Reshetylivka, Poltava region. She researches it and teaches these techniques.
Olha doesn’t want to leave her home, even if there’s a war, because this is her land, and she feels deep ties to it.
Oleksandr Smyrnov is a Ukrainian sculptor, generally working with wood. From the beginning of the war, he started to create graphic artworks to react to current events and transmit his emotions quicker. Oleksandr had some styrofoam at hand, so he decided to print with it.
How the war started in Kyiv, how to cure yourself with art, and what is the price of victory – watch in the new episode of Art in the Land of War!
Denys Tsiperko is a Ukrainian concept artist who worked with Marvel and other world majors of the global visual entertainment industry.
We talked about the role of creativity and advantages of 3D art, but most of all, about how the war revealed the essential things in our relationships with people.
Tiberiy Szilvashi is one of the masters of modern Ukrainian art, artist, curator, painting theoretician.
We have talked about the eternal and the temporal, about the new reality we woke up in on February 24, about what unites all Ukrainians – and the world, the little things that allow us to see the whole and the fluidity of a painter’s work.
Oleksandr Mykytenko is a young Ukrainian sculptor. He likes Korean, Japanese, and Chinese modern artworks, creates sculptures in a style, close to cyberpunk, and uses light in them.
How he keeps a certain emotional state for creating, why is it exhausting, and how science can combine with art – watch in the new Art in the Land of War video!
Inna Kovalyshena is a historian, writer, scriptwriter, and blogger. Two years ago, her first book was published – A Cool Story of Ukraine: from Dinosaurs till Now. Last year, the British division of Scholastic publishing house has acquired the rights in its English translation, so the book will be out this spring.
We talked about the need to learn history, how to explain Ukraine to the world and to the next generation, as well as the role of art in society.
Alexander Shchetynsky is a world famous Ukrainian composer. Since 2018, he teaches at Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts.
How to include folk melodies into a contemporary composition, how to make a sound of air raid alert with musical instruments, what a composer feels when his works are played along with classical ones, and how the Kharkiv conservatory recovers from heavy shelling – watch in the new video!
Svitlana Karunska is a sculptor from Kyiv. She creates sculptures with unusual materials, such as paper, cardboard, glass enamel, paint.
We talked about the meaning of Ukrainians and Ukraine for the world, the inner search and the self-actualization of an artist, the difficulties faced by women sculptors, and the symbolic meaning of art.
Gamlet Zinkivskyi is a street artist from Kharkiv. His artworks became one of the informal symbols of the city, sometimes clashing with public utility companies.
Gamlet’s paintings, created during the war, help city residents to endure the hard times, support soldiers and volunteers, and reassure that the city will keep resisting and will persevere together with Ukraine at large.