Art Communities at Risk: - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

Art Communities at Risk:
On Ukraine

SVITLANA BIEDARIEVA

To focus attention on the amplified hostility around the world to the figure of the artist and
artistic expression, as well as to attend to the conditions of specific instances of repression and
specific tactics of resistance, we have commissioned an occasional series consisting of short
contributions by and about artists, critics, and cultural professions at risk around the world,
starting with Slovenia, Cuba, and Russia and now including Ukraine.

—The Editors

As this issue goes to press, an alarming number of Russian troops—currently
around 160,000—massed along the Ukrainian border have begun pouring over it.
A full-scale war in Ukrainian territories has broken out, threatening Ukrainian ter-
ritorial integrity and its people.

But however frightening, these actions are part of an ongoing eight-year mili-
tary invasion of Ukraine, which had already resulted in numerous casualties
among military and civilians, the loss of Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and
Donetsk oblasts, and roughly a million and a half displaced people, former resi-
dents of those occupied regions. The year 2014 marked the beginning of this war
of aggression. In that watershed year for Ukrainian society and its artistic commu-
nity, a series of unprecedented events unfolded within a few months and shattered
the sense of peace that had characterized civic life in the country.

The gatherings of protesters in Maidan Square in 2013 were a harbinger of
things to come. They began as a call for democratic elections. But the experience
of these collective assertions, and the definition of a Ukrainian voice independent
of Russia—despite the deaths of over one hundred protesters—resulted in a pro-
found change in Ukrainian society: a renewed and pervasive feeling of indepen-
dence, a resounding sense of solidarity, and an awareness of freedom of expres-
sion as a core value.

Such change came at a high cost. The pro-Russian president Viktor
Yanukovych fled the country as a result of the protests. An illegitimate referendum
in Crimea, which pro-Russian militants held in March 2014, cut the area off from
the country, dividing families and friendships. Further, Russian troops launched

OCTOBER 179. Inverno 2022, pag. 137–149. © 2022 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00452

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138

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Maria Kulikovska. 6 Ballistic Soap Figures (Homo Bulla), 2019,
for the film The Forgotten, 2019, by Daria Onyshchenko.

an intensive military drive towards eastern Ukraine. The destruction of Donetsk
International Airport in 2015, resulting in the deaths of over one hundred
Ukrainian soldiers, created a new pantheon of heroes in Ukrainian society,
though these represented only a small fraction of the war’s casualties. Civilian loss-
es were significant and people were forced from their homes, fleeing shelling, E
human-rights violations were pervasive. The militants created two new, unrecog-
nized republics covering large parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (in the so-
called Donbas region) that were referred to as the “ungoverned” regions, Anche se
the irony was evident. A stream of refugees from Donbas soon flooded Ukraine’s
main cities. Many people who remained in the occupied territories became
hostages of the situation, subject to a weakening of basic human rights, including
freedom of movement and expression, as well as widespread violence.

Not surprisingly, art communities in the east of Ukraine and Crimea were
very much affected by the war. The self-proclaimed pro-Russian “authorities”
moved quickly to suppress freedom of expression: Artist-activists were often among
the first targets of violence and were forced to join the exodus of refugees from
the Russian-occupied territories. These displaced artists found themselves in an
ambiguous position. On the one hand, they became vulnerable, positioned precar-
iously in the absence of clear cultural policies from the Ukrainian government in

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On Ukraine

139

the non-occupied territory concerning displaced artists at risk. Some felt marginal-
ized as refugees, with limited access to resources—the media frequently intimated
Quello, as easterners, they had allowed the war to happen. D'altra parte, given
their new position, visibility, and roles, many felt obligated to speak about the war
and its impact on ordinary people and to discuss this trauma in a public space.
Ukrainian art became increasingly focused on recording and reflecting on trau-
matic stories in the collective memory of forced migration, displacement, and loss.
In certain cases, cultural work was specifically targeted. The premises of the
Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives in Donetsk were seized by an armed pro-
Russian group in 2014 and installations on its property by Ukrainian and interna-
tional artists—including Maria Kulikovska, Zhanna Kadyrova, Daniel Buren, E
Leandro Erlich—were ruined. The militants exploded an installation by Pascale
Marthine Tayou in a particularly barbaric manner, enraged by its gender-related
message. The cultural center became a notorious and illegal political prison where
to this day pro-Ukrainian activists are being held and tortured.1

Some of the artists I talked with for this article collaborated with the
Izolyatsia Platform when it still defined cultural policy in the Donbas region and
consolidated the artistic community. Now artists originally from Donbas and
Crimea are scattered throughout Ukrainian territory and beyond. They continue
to highlight the cultural and human losses caused by the Russian war and the risks
this explosive situation continues to carry for the future of Ukrainian democracy
and territorial integrity. The inability to return home is a focus of suffering but
also a guiding light for those artists whose families, property, and memories were
left behind.

Clearly, at this moment of heightened crisis, relief and forgetting are not
possible. New military action in an expanded territory inevitably brings more casu-
alties, devastating regions and precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe.

Like Ukrainian civilians in general, artists are preparing for the possible esca-
lation. The artists I spoke with for this article are from Donbas and Crimea. Some
had to leave their Russian-occupied hometowns at the beginning of the war; others
lost the ability to reunite with their families in the occupied territories.

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev are interdisciplinary artists who work with
documents and objects left behind in the now-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk
oblasts, using them to explore personal histories in such projects as Occupation
(2015) and Fairy Castles of Donetsk (2018). The artists have since moved to Poland;
their property in Ukraine has been ruined.

Maria Kulikovska is a sculptor, architect, and performance artist who was
pushed out of her home in Crimea after its annexation in 2014. In her projects,
she discusses the experience of displacement: placing bodily replicas on a map of
Crimea, as in Stardust (2015), shooting them with a gun (Homo Bulla, 2014–18),
and turning the figures of her entire family into bronze-cast bells (President of
Crimea, 2021).

1.
Stampa universitaria, 2021) by Stanislav Aseev, which includes an account of his detention in Izolyatsia.

See the recent book In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

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Piotr Armianovski is a performance artist and documentary-film director, IL
author of short films—including Mustard in the Gardens (2018), In the East (2015),
and Me and Mariupol (2017)—that evoke the turbulence and conflict of life in
occupied Donbas. Unable to return to his hometown since 2014, Armianovski visu-
alizes it through the stories of other displaced people, shooting his films in border-
land areas that have remained under the control of Ukraine.

Alevtina Kakhidze is a performance, media, and graphic artist who has dedi-
cated a number of projects (collected in the series Strawberry Andreevna, 2014–19)
to her mother, who stayed in the occupied territory of the Donetsk oblast and was
an eyewitness to the outbreak of violence there. Unable to extract her from the
dangerous area, Kakhidze collected conversations with her mother as a form of
deputized war reportage until her death at a military outpost separating Ukraine-
controlled and occupied territories in 2019.

The interviews were conducted via Zoom in January.

Svitlana Biedarieva: Could you tell us about your life and your art practice before

the war?

Andrii Dostliev: At that time, I almost didn’t make any art. There were attempts to
make art books and electronic music, and then there was a project in the
urban space of Luhansk that we did with friends in 2013. Then I went to
Poland and they went to the Maidan protests, where students were attacked
by the ex-government.

Lia Dostlieva: I lived at that time in Kyiv for several years, though my family
remained in Donbas. I worked on craft projects, making soft toys that were of
artistic quality but not critical art. Also, I volunteered at the children’s oncol-
ogy unit as a portrait photographer for those children.

Maria Kulikovska: I finished my studies as an architect in 2013, and I explored the
correlation between a body and architectural space. I remember making a
drawing at one of the courses at the Academy of Art, where different architec-
tural shapes grew from an embryo-like female body, such as buildings, houses,
bridges, marking the belonging to the space. That work was destroyed by a pro-
fessor who was appalled by the absence of architectural drawing in the image,
and this made me turn toward art rather than architecture.

Piotr Armianovski: In addition to my artistic practice, I worked in organizing the fes-
tival of amateur films “Other Territories” and the theater festival “Art-
Alternative.” I also did street interventions and actions. My art practice was
mostly in performance. With the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in
2014, I began working as a journalist for Ukrainian media and as an indepen-
dent documentary director. From the materials that were shot at that time, IO
created several short films.

Alevtina Kakhidze: Before the war, I researched consumerist culture, with projects
about the products from the West that began appearing in Ukraine and
seemed very unusual. Since the war began, I look at all these luxury-shop dis-

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On Ukraine

141

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Alevtina Kakhidze. Through the War with
Strawberry Andreevna. 2014–16.
Courtesy of Grynyov Art Collection.

plays that I had criticized before from a different point of view. Now, for me,
a shop display that is open and not covered with boards is a sign of peaceful
life. I also focused on the world of plants before the war. I made a huge map
that I planned to cover, researching the vegetative realm in Ukraine. When
the war began, it seemed that it was not relevant anymore.

Biedarieva: What has changed with the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of

war in eastern Ukraine in spring 2014?

Dostlieva: I received a scholarship in Poland when the war began, and here is
where finally my practice got this shape and found its critical function. IL
war impacted me on a mental and emotional level; I just couldn’t think of
anything else or work with any other topic. The war entered my hometown,
but I had to read about it in the news. That’s how I discovered one morn-
ing that my family’s apartment where I grew up was abandoned and possi-
bly ruined, and all the material objects related to memories from that place
were lost. The most offensive part, beyond material losses, was that in the
apartment were the memories of previous generations, such as photo-
graphic albums of our relatives. Our family arrived in Donbas in the 1950s,

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142

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but our family archive had earlier photographs, for example, those of my
grandmother and great-grandmother who were evacuated to Uzbekistan
during WWII, and even some pictures from the 19th century. Everything
was lost. That is how my focus on the restitution of memory emerged.
Andrii developed it because I was almost paralyzed from the horror of all
these events at that moment.

Dostliev: Well, this experience suddenly overshadowed everything. In the news, we
could only watch how the troops move from both sides of the border, E
keep looking at the map all the time. I tried to find and interact with some
volunteers to help the army. Each time I spoke on the phone with my moth-
er in Donetsk, I tried to persuade her to move from there, at least temporari-
ly, to the nearby city of Kharkiv. We talked at great length with Lia about this,
and I began collecting photos from the same period, buying them at flea
markets, recombining them as collages, recoloring and recreating scenes
that I remembered from my family photographs, to replace the lost originals.
This felt like a collective experience shared by more than a million people,
among them artists, so we launched a project, Reconstruction of Memory,
where we invited displaced artists from the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and
Crimea to discuss their experiences of loss and to restore their memories
through reconstructing memorabilia. Rather than any solutions, we searched
only for a language to describe this new reality. We were seeking to under-
stand the ongoing events.

Kulikovska: When the war and occupation started, architecture became even less
urgent for me. The military situation made me think more about the bodily
impact in its relation to the vulnerability of human life. At the time of the
events of the Maidan, when the situation was escalating to the violent side in
Gennaio 2014, I married my colleague Jacqueline (who is now my ex-wife).
We had to do it in Sweden because in Ukraine same-sex marriages are not
allowed. We spoke together about how the Ukrainian government establishes
borders, personal limits for what a person is allowed to do in their own
house. As soon as we married, the government of a different country, Russia,
violated borders and took my home—Crimea. When I flew back to Crimea
from Sweden in February, I couldn’t continue to Kerch, my hometown,
because of the annexation of Crimea. It was dangerous to go there. I have
not been able to return since. I had to stay in Kyiv. The anonymous people
who illegally arrived decided for me what I can do and what I can’t do in my
own home. The war re-formed my life completely. Now, eight years later,
when I am asked where I am from, I do not always know what to reply
because this territory doesn’t exist in the world’s eyes and I don’t exist in it
anymore. My life is secluded behind a border that I cannot cross, and this is
reflected in my art, which is a kind of self-therapy to me. I work with autobio-
graphical elements in both performance and sculpture, using my own body
as the source of the analysis of the reality around me. The sculptures that I

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On Ukraine

143

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Piotr Armianovski. People’s Museum of Avdiivka. 2019.

make are all molds of myself made of different materials. In spring 2014, IO
had with me a kit of watercolors and I painted all the time—naked bodies
with different modifications; they all represented a female body mutilated
between the closed borders. I take legal migration forms that accumulated
over these years, I sit at the desk and paint body parts over them, some of
them vulgar, to visualize my frustration.

Armianovski: My departure from Donetsk was not planned. I was working on a doc-
umentary film in different locations there, but at a certain point the outburst
of violence became emotionally overwhelming. I saw several truly horrible
scenes. So in May 2014, I had to stop shooting the footage and left Donetsk
for what I thought was a week or so. I have not returned. I was blacklisted by
the pro-Russian forces that occupied Donetsk because I was a member of the
territorial committee that tried to hold democratic presidential elections
there. For me, going there is dangerous. I know several cases in which peo-
ple were kidnapped and tortured in the basements of illegal prisons that the
Russian-allied occupants created, so I tried to keep working from afar. A year
after I arrived in Kyiv, I was invited to the Theater of Displaced People to
stage a play, and that prompted a renaissance of my work. I have staged sev-
eral plays dedicated to Donetsk and the war. I kept returning to the parts of
Donbas that are controlled by Ukraine, Anche se, getting closer and closer to
the border. There, I shot my films. Mustard in the Gardens (2018) was a lyrical
story of a young woman who returns to her empty family house filled with

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144

OCTOBER

memories and surrounded by minefields. For me, it was an attempt to return
to my own house, even if metaphorically. Me and Mariupol (2017) era
inspired by the border city of Mariupol, which struck me as a small version of
Donetsk and sparked a sense of nostalgia for me. At the time, I was reading
Zygmunt Bauman about the real and the imaginary and saw this in my own
eyes in Mariupol, as well as in industrial Donetsk. Imagine: There are large
plants polluting the air and water, but for some reason people love this city.
Those who live there see it differently. My other short work, People’s Museum
of Avdiivka (2019), brings a hopeful look at the museum that was created by
the inhabitants of Avdiivka, a village in the “gray zone” of military action.
The creation of this museum aimed to resist the war by preserving local
memory; it was eventually ruined and its director died, but the people recon-
structed it and kept it open. A location that attracts my attention for a docu-
mentary now is a former political prison in Lviv, “The Prison on Lontsky,"
which is currently a museum. The Soviet government tortured and killed
people there, as did the Gestapo. When I saw it, I felt that this place is the
same as the illegal prison Izolyatsia in Donetsk where similar stories happen
right now. Repetition, exchange, and consolidation connect the regions
through historical experience.

Kakhidze: During my trip to the east of Ukraine, I visited Slovyansk, a small indus-
trial city near the front line that had been occupied by pro-Russian military
forces, but then they retreated and the city became Ukrainian again. I was
surprised to discover that all the people there discussed their gardens and
the nature around them as if they were escaping from this violent reality.
That’s how my project with plants took on a new angle. It brought me a focus
on growth and resistance, as the plants regenerate and do not get damaged
so easily as people.

Since 2014, I have done more than ten projects on topics directly relat-
ed to the war: texts and narration, performance, and interventions. Recentemente,
I have illustrated a report by Amnesty International that focused on the war-
related rise of violence against women. The report makes clear that during
times of war, women are the most vulnerable, especially in towns like those
bordering the occupied territories in the east.

Many of my projects were inspired by my mother. A pensioner, she was
forced to cross the border between occupied and free Ukrainian territories
to collect her pension, spending many hours in military outposts. In 2019,
she died while crossing the demarcation line. Now there is no longer any sit-
uation in which I call her and she doesn’t pick up the phone, so I am not
anxious anymore. I know how it sounds, but I can imagine the suffering of
many people who couldn’t get their parents out of there or who couldn’t go
there because of the danger for many activists. The risk of what will happen
to their relatives, the inability to help in an emergency are the main concerns
for many displaced people, rather than troop buildups.

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On Ukraine

145

I have made a monument in the graveyard to my mother. I was sur-
prised that many people, instead of criticizing the fact that I didn’t move her
to Kyiv from the occupied territories, as they did many times before with my
other artworks, were simply compassionate. This monument is about all
these people who couldn’t leave their homes because of their age, their
attachment to their land, and what they built over their entire lives. Tuttavia,
when I wrote extensively for the media about ineffective Ukrainian social
policies for elderly people in the occupied zones, there was a wave of criti-
cism towards me, labeling people in the occupied territories terrorists and
therefore not deserving of social guarantees from Ukraine.

Biedarieva: How do you see the situation now, with the current buildup of troops
on the border with Ukraine? What risks for the art community does it bring?
Dostlieva: I feel surprised that everyone speaks now as if the war is going to begin.
The truth is that the war has been going on for the last eight years. I don’t
see any focused attempt to turn to the experience of people who already suf-
fered through all of this. All the discussions about emergency suitcases, what
needs to be in the first-aid kit, and what to do in the case of shelling appear
as if they are brand-new thoughts and conversations. Many people in
Ukraine already know the answers to these questions, but unfortunately their
voices stay on the periphery. I have a bad feeling that when the war began in
the east, the attitude was that we are somehow guilty ourselves because we
are from Donetsk and we invited the war in. Today, the war approaches “nor-
mal” people and therefore it is alarming. So this blindness to the people
from the east and social exclusion continues.

Kulikovska: The artistic community faces the same risks as the entire Ukrainian
society does. I am a mother of a four-month-old baby born in Kyiv, and I
don’t want her to pass through my painful experience and become a refugee
from the place where she was born. In 2014, I wanted to go to the front but
realized I would probably be quickly killed because I had never held a
weapon. So I understood that my artistic practice could become a weapon in
which I could voice the concerns of many people in the same situation and
create a platform where the voices of the displaced could be heard. Tuttavia,
how can I defend my child if the military action unfolds further in Ukraine?
How can other people defend their children? I don’t know, honestly. I am
afraid.

Armianovski: This situation of instability is not new. We experienced that in spring
2014. The difference is that back then I could go to the border and physical-
ly communicate with those people who invaded the Donetsk territory, look
them in the eyes, and ask them questions. This time it feels worse because I
am present but helpless. I feel that I can’t do anything to change the situa-
zione. I can’t go to the front and see anything with my own eyes. I’ve consid-
ered joining the Territorial Defense Forces; these are circumstances not of
an artist anymore but a citizen.

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146

OCTOBER

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Andrii Dostliev, Occupation. 2015.

Kakhidze: We had this argument among the artists about packing an emergency
suitcase, and we decided it was better to do it. Some artists I know are hiding
their paintings. I don’t know what museums are doing to prevent looting in
the case of military intervention. Tuttavia, for all the years of the war, many
people have developed such resistance that they can discuss those topics,
take action, and then move on to their everyday activities without thinking
back. Artists are already accustomed to reading horrifying news, but in the
last eight years of the war, such an attitude formed, such an emotional resis-
tance, that it doesn’t touch so much anymore.

Biedarieva: What cultural policy does Ukraine pursue regarding the artists who

were displaced as a result of the war?

Dostlieva: If something like that exists, I have not noticed it. I believe that all the
people who moved from Donbas helped themselves, and sometimes quite
well because they were able to continue making art despite the circum-
stances. As for a conscious cultural policy concerning displaced artists, IO
haven’t seen it. I saw instead the experience of displaced people being prob-
lematized in a negative way, as a question of not being patriotic enough and
of letting Russian tanks into their territories. Considering us as culturally
equal is sometimes problematic.

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On Ukraine

147

Dostliev: I would happily read interviews with other artists to see if someone has a
different position. But I don’t think that displaced artists appear in the pub-
lic sphere as a part of some kind of governmental effort.

Kulikovska: I don’t know about any program that supports artists who needed to
flee the war. Tuttavia, we need to understand that the country is not very
rich and it is in crisis. Unfortunately, our people are also ethically impover-
ished, and this is connected with the Soviet legacy. They did not develop crit-
ical thinking and solidarity to the extent that is needed in a situation like
Questo. As a dispersed entity, they hope for authority that could make rules for
everything. Conscious, humane, and critically thinking people, in my opin-
ion, do not need a governmental program to support them. Nearly all my
projects come from my earned and invested money or private sponsors. Questo
year, Tuttavia, thanks to the Ukrainian Institute and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, an important event happened: the Crimean Platform, where my hus-
band, Uleg Vinnichenko, and I participated in a sculptural project. I think
after the Crimean Platform, the professional curators who created it will
push such projects forward so that artists who work partly in the under-
ground because of their radical activity can receive at least some media sup-
port and public exposure and cease being marginalized.

Armianovski: I can’t say that there is any kind of special policy regarding displaced
artists. If one wants to make art, one can make art. You can go into business
and fund your projects in your free time or apply for programs of the
Ukrainian Cultural Foundation or the Ukrainian State Film Agency. There is
certainly a more transparent cultural policy that is connected not to the war
but to the Maidan and the cultural revolution it provoked in 2013. On the
other hand, Mustard in the Gardens, which touches upon topics of war and dis-
placement, received the main award at the Biennial of Young Art in Kharkiv
organized by the Ministry of Culture. Is this a sign that there is a certain
interest in the refugee topic? It might be, but there are no state-funded work-
shops, unions, or platforms I would know about.

Kakhidze: The government is creating a new institution called the Institute of Peace
Building. I was invited as a representative of the artistic community to the
process of discussion of its concept. So we can say that, finally, the voices of
artists are present in institutional development. Some artists don’t want to
collaborate with the government in their projects, and it is their right, but I
never heard of any censorship from the government’s cultural policies. I like
a work by Anton Lapov called #hero; it is a program that scans all the social
networks in a given region—Kharkiv and Bakhmut (a city near the front) are
examples. This program analyzed the tag “hero” and visualized what users of
the Internet consider as such: from Ukrainian soldiers to the pro-Russian
occupying forces. And this was shown in a state-sponsored exhibition—a sign
of quite a healthy policy, which allows critical scope and doesn’t see it as con-
troversial rhetoric.

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148

OCTOBER

Biedarieva: How do you see the future of this military situation? Can art make posi-

tive contributions to the resolution of the crisis?

Dostliev: I don’t see a positive solution to this situation. I look forward with horror
and prepare for a negative scenario as this threat develops. There is no way
to plan, in my opinion, only to wait.

Dostlieva: We live outside Ukraine now, so we are in a privileged situation in com-
parison with those who directly experience the threat of invasion. We can
speak about it, make projects about what is going on, participate in exhibi-
zioni, and attract international attention to this question.

Kulikovska: If we don’t have culture and art in society, we will persist in endless dis-
cussions about who is to blame and we will not even need Russian propagan-
da to become fragmented. My husband and I are creating a gallery-shelter
called Garage 33 for giving voice to the artists who aren’t currently heard.
We have bought a garage shed in a residential district in Kyiv and are
expanding it into a gallery. Art has many hierarchies, and artists need to fol-
low certain rules to be heard. We want to find new names, especially in the
territories touched by the conflict. And I hope that we will transform the sur-
rounding space. I believe that through a diversity of cultural perspectives, UN
person becomes open to interaction and finding civilized solutions to every
conflict. If there is no full-scale war to come, I hope we will be able to create
a safe platform for expressing opinions where a personal position can
become a political statement and change society in this way.

Armianovski: I often think that when the war ends, the people who went through
these scary years will still remain. Displaced people will return to their home-
towns, and the task of reintegrating them and rebuilding the trust between
them will be the duty of artistic and cultural projects. Arte, in my opinion, ha
such a possibility of reconstruction. While the war is on, art and film can fos-
ter a feeling of closeness, support, and communication between people, COME
well as the possibility of transmitting empathy. This helps ameliorate the anx-
iety of everyday life.

Kakhidze: For me, there is no question that art is a powerful mechanism for the dis-
cussion and exchange of thoughts in a time of conflict. There is, Tuttavia,
the question of to what extent artists are involved in the decision-making
processes—they can’t impact legislation, Per esempio, even as a consultative
voice. This is something to improve upon in the future.

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On Ukraine

149

Between 2015 E 2021, the war became a stalemate—which should not be seen,
Tuttavia, as a de-escalation—and life returned to Donbas. New initiatives of target-
ed resistance to the violence began to emerge along the border of the conflict.
These projects aimed to involve the territories bordering the temporarily occupied
zones in a dialogue through art. The idea of speaking with people through art
stems from a strong collective belief that reuniting is possible and that art is the
key to overcoming traumas and political differences. One and a half million dis-
placed people, Tuttavia, remain separated from their homes—homes that, In
many cases, no longer exist, except in their memories. Despite the lack of govern-
mental support, artists who experienced displacement have a privileged role in
conveying their concerns and fostering public discussion about the rights of
refugees and fashioning a public response to Russian aggression.

Now, when the hope for a peaceful life is once again threatened by the con-
flict’s dramatic intensification, art provides one of the mechanisms for a civilized dis-
cussion rather than a scene of panic. Artistic projects that are conceived today will
undoubtedly reflect the threats, anxieties, and risks of these most recent weeks—and
will challenge the breakout of a full-scale war. They will also teach resilience and
strength as a remedy to those who experienced loss and dispossession.

The year 2022 is a watershed that brings more threats to Ukrainian society
and expands the violence further into Ukrainian territory. Hope for a peaceful
future and strength are all that remain to us.

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