Decolonizing Ukrainian Culture:The Role of Art Institutions in a Time of War

In this lecture, Petrach Fellow Dr. Svitlana Biedarieva will explore how the Russian war against Ukraine has affected institutional development in the Ukrainian cultural sector, with particular attention to changes in art organizations. She will discuss the war's impact on culture, which triggered decolonization processes in Ukraine at all institutional levels, from private grassroots initiatives to non-profits and state-funded public institutions. After eight years of partial occupation of Ukrainian territories by Russia and tense hybrid war, the outbreak of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24th, 2022 further fueled decolonization processes. Based on her research conducted in collaboration with the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, Dr. Biedarieva will address institutional transformation as the key to decolonization and analyze how Ukrainian art organizations are working to dismantle historically entangled narratives and contribute to the establishment of a new epistemological basis.

Speaker:

Dr. Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator with an interest in Ukrainian, Eastern European, and Latin American art. She holds her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. In 2019-2020, she curated an exhibition At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019 in Mexico City and Winnipeg, Canada. Her books include Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991-2021 (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2021) and At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020, co-edited with co-curator Hanna Deikun). In 2022-23, Dr. Biedarieva was selected as a George F. Kennan Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center and as a Non-Resident Fellow at the George Washington University for her research, as the CEC ArtsLink International Fellow for her curatorial work, and as the Prince Claus Seed Award Laureate for her artistic work.

Moderator:

Dr. Henry Hale is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Director of the Petrach Program on Ukraine, and Co-Director of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia). He has spent extensive time conducting field research in post-Soviet Eurasia. His work has won two prizes from the American Political Science Association and he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for his research in Russia in 2007-2008. He is chair of the editorial board of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization.