Coinciding with the final stop of the touring exhibition In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (29 June – 13 October 2024), this international conference will bring together established and emerging scholars for a first-ever discussion dedicated exclusively to Ukraine’s visual culture of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to be held outside Ukraine.
For decades the modernist art production of Ukraine has been viewed through the imperialist lens of the so-called ‘Russian avant-garde’, with scholarship dedicated specifically to the local Ukrainian context remaining marginal and mostly a purview of home-produced historiography. The Russian Federation’s brutal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has finally prompted a reassessment of the existing art historical canon, posing uncomfortable questions regarding the complicity of western academia and institutions in overlooking the Kremlin’s neo-imperialist pretensions. The current conference seeks to harness this unprecedented moment to redress historical injustices, invest in epistemic reparations and reclaim names, events and institutions for Ukraine’s cultural space. At the same time, by recognising and celebrating the country’s multicultural dimension and pluralism of local artistic practices, the conference will go beyond the established national paradigm to investigate cultural transfers and intercultural exchanges.
With a programme of academic papers and panel discussions dedicated to visual arts in a variety of media, the conference seeks to address the following questions: How did artists engage with indigenous pictorial traditions to construct Ukraine’s modern cultural identity? How did this engagement evolve under the changing political and ideological regimes? What intercultural and transnational encounters had informed the development of modern art in Ukraine? What is the legacy of Ukraine’s artistic modernism and what vision of the future can it offer?
Conference ticket holders will have access to an exclusive preview of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts on Friday 4 October. To attend the preview, register through the booking before Monday 30 September.
Organised by Dr Maria Mileeva, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art , The Courtauld, and Dr Katia Denysova, co-curator of In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s. This event is part of Migrations: People, Politics, Objects, made possible by The Courtauld Research Forum.
Programme:
Friday 4 October
8.00 – 10.00: Exhibition Preview of In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s for conference participants and ticket-holders.
The Royal Academy of Arts, London
10.30 – 11.00: Registration opens
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square
11.00 – 11.15: Opening remarks, and introduction to the day
Dr Maria Mileeva, The Courtauld, and Dr Katia Denysova, co-curator of ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s’
11.15 – 12.15: Keynote I ’Like Marco in Hell’ – How an Age-Old Ukrainian Idiom Laid Bare an Entire Modernist Movement
Professor Myroslava M. Mudrak, Emerita Professor of the History of Art, The Ohio State University
12.15 – 13.30: Lunch Break
Provided for speakers and organisers
13.30 – 15.20: Panel I – Ukraine’s Modernism Across Borders: Imperial, Émigré and Institutional Entanglements
Chaired by Dr Maria Mileeva, The Courtauld
Dr Michał Burdziński, Silesian Museum in Katowice,
‘Kindred Spirits? On Correlations Between Young Poland (Młoda Polska) and Young Ukraine (Moloda Muza and Beyond)’.
Dr Oksana Kondratyeva, Independent Scholar and Artist,
‘Modernist Stained Glass in Ukraine: From Western to Ukrainian Tradition’.
Dr Jakub Hauser, Museum of Czech Literature, Prague,
‘The Presidential Portrait that Never Came to Be: Archipenko, Prague and the Ukrainian Émigré Community’.
15.20 – 15.40: Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided
15.40 – 17.30: Panel II – Modernisms in Ukraine: Continuities, Ruptures, Legacies
Chaired by Dr Klara Kemp-Welch, The Courtauld
Lada Nakonechna, documenta Institute and University of Kassel,
‘Directions of Modernist Pedagogy: The 1920s at the Kyiv Art Institut’.
Polina Baitsym, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna,
‘Suspensions in Island Time: ARWM and the Nenets’ Encounters on the Arctic Circle’.
Dr Svitlana Biedarieva, Independent Art Historian, Artist and Curator,
‘Tracing Avant-Garde Legacies in Contemporary Ukrainian Painting: Oleksandr Roytburd, Vlada Ralko, and Tiberiy Szilvashi’ [online].
17.30 – 18.00: Comfort Break
18.00 – 19.30: Panel Disucussion – The Multicultural Dimension of Ukraine’s Modernism
Dr Uilleam Blacker, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL
Andrij Bojarov, Visual Artist, Independent Curator and Researcher
Dr Katia Denysova, Co-curator of ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine‘
19.30 – 20.15: Drinks Reception
Open to all
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Saturday 5 October
9.45 – 10.00: Introduction to the day
Dr Maria Mileeva, The Courtauld, and Dr Katia Denysova, co-curator of ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s’
10.00 – 11.00: Keynote II ’Modernism Regained: The Necessity of a Revisionist Approach in Ukrainian Art History’
Dr Konstantin Akinsha, Independent Art Historian, Curator and Journalist.
11.00 – 11.30: Refreshment Break
Coffee and Tea provided
11.30 – 13.20: Panel III – Imagining the City: Fusing Ukrainian, Urban and Transnational
Chaired by Dr Michał Murawski, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL
Dr Yuri Shevchuk, the Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University,
‘Ukrainian Modernist Cinema and the Discovery of the City’.
Dr Dan Dubowitz, Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University,
‘An Instrument of Perpetual Revolution for Kharkiv, 1930’.
Dr Christina E. Crawford, Emory University,
‘Transnational Entanglements: Modernist Industrial Architecture in Eastern Ukraine’.
13.20 – 13.40: Closing Remarks
With thanks to our sponsors: The Archipenko Foundation, New York Stephenson art, London The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) The British Academy PPV (perverting the power vertical), a politics & aesthetics platform based within FRINGE: UCL’s Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity The British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES)
