25 Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance

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.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (2025), the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 (2021), and the co-editor of At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (2019). She has published texts in leading academic journals and media outlets, such as October, Daedalus, Financial Times, and The Art Newspaper. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.