Global spotlight: Video art from Ukraine

Experimental and Truland Galleries

Featured Artists: Nikolay Karabinovych, Mykola Ridnyi, and Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy,

Global Spotlight: Video Art from Ukraine introduces audiences to four of Ukraine’s leading contemporary artists, with a focus on recent video work.

When viewed from a distance (whether of time or of geography), periods of history are often reduced to one side or the other of a strict dichotomy: a period of war or a time of peace. In reality, there is rarely a distinct moment when “normal” life ends and a state of war begins. The official declaration of war is rarely the first sign of armed conflict and a war’s tragic consequences persist for years, decades, or centuries after its official conclusion.

The works in the exhibition address these liminal times and spaces, considering daily life, public memory, and civic identity preceding, in the midst of, and adjacent to war and armed conflict. They speak directly to the artists’ experiences of the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as the periods of civic uprising, civil unrest, and separatist violence that preceded Russia’s invasion of the country in February of 2022. The exhibition also reflects more broadly on the threats faced by societies struggling to preserve or expand their democratic institutions, including the weaponization of propaganda and conspiracy theories, weakened government institutions, growing political sectarianism, failures of collective memory.