Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance

This edited volume traces the development of art practices in Ukraine from the 2004 Orange Revolution, through the 2013?2014 Revolution of Dignity, to the ongoing Russian war of aggression.

Contributors explore how transformations of identity, the emergence of participatory democracy, relevant changes to cultural institutions, and the realization of the necessity of decolonial release have influenced the focus and themes of contemporary art practices in Ukraine. The chapters analyze such important topics as the postcolonial retrieval of the past, the deconstruction of post-Soviet visualities, representations of violence and atrocities in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine, and the notion of art as a mechanism of civic resistance and identity-building.

The book will be of interest to scholars of art history, Eastern European studies, cultural studies, decolonial studies, and postcolonial studies.

Representative of a generation of contemporary Ukrainian artists, activists, and a cohort of academic scholars untainted by the trauma of imperialist ideology, freed of entrenched Russian narratives, and absent of the slightest nostalgia for a bygone Soviet era, this volume of essays offers fresh perspectives on the texture of a population and its culture breaking out of the clutches of colonization. Chronicling artistic events from the time of the dissolution of the USSR through the Orange (2004) and Euromaidan (2014) Revolutions to today?s persistent criminal assault of Russia on Ukraine, the contributions give rise to a new, inclusive, way of thinking about the history of contemporary art by exposing a society transformed by the extraordinary circumstances of postcoloniality and war.

Myroslava M. Mudrak, Emerita Professor, History of Art, The Ohio State University