This exhibition was organised as part of the 2023 LSE Festival: People and Change. A collaboration between two departments, the project brought together a multiplicity of creators to foster a conversation on war and society, communal destruction and resiliance, and cultures of trauma and rememberance.
The exhibition reflects the views of Ukrainian artists and photographers on the war in their homeland that has been on-going since February 2022. The war is approached from both the personal and the public lens. Artists reflect on what the conflict means to them and their communities, while engaging with the public narratives of the war, the resistance of a people, propagandisation by the aggressors, and the voyeurism of distant, foreign spectators. The artists’ views of the personal and the public are threaded by their sense of grief and loss, but also by their sense of resilience and their perceptions of the future of Ukraine and the resolve of Ukrainians.
A reception was organised for the exhibition on 14 June 2023 for staff, students, alumni and friends of the European Institute. Some images,
The exhibition features works by,
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. As an artist, she focuses on the topics of decolonisation, violence, and resistance. The work on display at the exhibition is titled, Morphology of War 2. You can read more about her work here.
Yan Dobronosov is a Ukrainian photojournalist. His January 15, 2023 Yellow Kitchen Photo was widely shared on social media. It is one of ten works of his on display at the exhibition, You can view more of his work here.
Kostiantyn Liberov and Vlada Liberova are a couple who work together as war photographers from Ukraine. They have been photographing the war since 2022 and have documented in photos the long-lasting and one of the most tragic battles for Bachmut, Donetsk region, images from which are on display. You can view more of their work here.
Olha Pryymak is a painter, currently based at Royal College of Art in London. She uses plants as a medium and protagonists of the narratives on war in her work, examining the human experince and also the ecocide caused from the destruction. Her painting displayed at the exhibition is titled, Everytime you get scared, you get a little less scared. You can view her work here.
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What Art Makes of War
As part of the exhibition, the European institute also organised a public panel discussion, featuring two of the artists, What Art Makes of War: perspectives on and from the Ukraine War. Reflecting on the implications and experiences of the Ukraine war and relating them to other conflicts, the panel examined the role of art and its limits in addressing wartime violence and its effects.
Speakers included Svitlana Biedarieva (George F. Kennan Fellow, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center), Rachel Kerr (Professor of War and Society, King's College London), Denisa Kostovicova (Associate Professor in Global Politics, LSE European Institute), and Olha Pryymak (artist, Royal College of Art London) with Chair, Jennifer Jackson-Preece (Associate Professor in Nationalism, LSE European Institute).
This event is available for playback here.
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