It's Time for Ukraine to Speak
by Kateryna Iakovlenko
In 1984, following an incident that left Odesa without electricity and running water, the Ukrainian painter Leonid Voitsekhov walked through the city's streets, accompanied by other artists and carrying a poster that read, "They'll Settle the Score With Us for It." It was the calm after the storm: torn branches, leaves, algae, and deadly rubbish were scattered throughout Odesa's streets and beaches. This performance, which was built on a game of words and an absurd desire to punish nature in order to pinpoint the blame, became a symbol of the need for political change in the twilight years of the Soviet Union.
Who are “they”? some people asked Voitsekhov.
The forces of nature, he replied.
It is difficult to imagine the courage and bravery of those who risked being caught and punished by the Soviet police. The power of this performance is undoubtedly in its absurdity of humor. Still, to a greater extent, this is a statement of personal responsibility, one which applies unquestionably not only to mutilated trees but to words and deeds–social and political responsibility above all. And, in the end, the responsibility of the artist. Does the artist have the right to remain silent about the horrors happening right before their eyes? We know from the history of art that silence is equal to death.
In his essay On the Concept of History. Theses on the Philosophy of History (1942), Walter Benjamin wrote that the "storm" is nothing but the progress that pushes society into the future. Analyzing the image of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, he notes that the violent force and power of the storm tore the Angel's wings and made his movements impossible, raising dust and debris around him. Addressing the same image of Angelus Novus and referencing the ideas of Walter Benjamin, the curator Okwui Enwezor identified its eloquence and importance in contemporary history: at the feet of the Angel lay the wreckage of ruined destinies and lives. Curating an outstanding international exhibition at Venice Biennale in 2015, he reviewed the history of art on behalf of oppressed societies and cultures. Consequently, he undermines the brutal nature and understanding of colonial “progress”.
The strength and frequency of today's storms are sporadic, chaotic, and soulless. Today, it is erroneous to call such movements progressive. Today's "forces of nature," which are destroying Ukrainian landscapes, will be identified by their surnames, dates of birth, and positions in the Russian army. And any true resistance to this storm begins with having the courage to call it by its own name.
According to Benjamin, there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Thus, art history might be reviewed as a history of violence–and the history of Ukrainian art is no different.
I.
In a letter to the artist Opanas Zalyvakha, the leading Ukrainian modernist from the 60s, Alla Horska noted that "the history of art equals the history of form and equals the history of its society." Ukrainian art has long been hidden, always having been renamed as something else: the Russian avant-garde, naive folk art, formalism, or, even more awkwardly, the "South Russian wave." There have been two critical factors in this battle for succession, namely imperialistic Russian culture pushing it off the map, thus depriving the Ukrainian modernist tradition of its rich culture. Therefore, the correct naming, restoration of facts, biographies, and return of works is a necessary strategy for revising cultural geography.
Ukrainian modernism has survived despite severe restrictions, censorship, deprivation, and the assassination of prominent artists during the Soviet era. It was inspired, and I would say it is rooted in the "naive" folk art tradition, enriched by individual stories and sources that could be told by those who survived. But what exactly is "naive” folk art?
During the height of Stalinism, the work of Ukrainian artists was allowed and promoted only if it was woven into the "nature" of decorative folk or naive art. It was said that the "folk" was seen as devoid of modernist traditions. As such, the "folk" aspect of it was perceived as different and opposed to the urban, intellectual, or progressive, that is, devoid of potential. However, this is a simplistic view of Ukrainian art and its chthonic energy, especially for such artists as Hanna Sobachko-Shostak. The avant-garde artists Oleksandra Exter, Vasyl Yermilov, and Kazimir Malevich had close ties to the Ukrainian "folk" masters. The biographies of these avant-garde artists point to profound inspiration from images, forms, and artistic decisions of self-taught authors. To a greater extent, this inspiration was borne out of cooperation: all of these artists visited artels, where they talked to the locals, taught them, discussed ideas, and exchanged invaluable life experiences.
Hanna Sobachko-Shostak
From the perspective of intellectual history, we can find more examples of inspiration. Women were long viewed solely as the object of inspiration, incapable of being inspired and creating themselves. Women artists held mediocre positions, primarily because of patriarchal dominance where they lived. Similar things happened to the “naive” artists mentioned above. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, these women artists managed to create incredible "fantastic" modernist images, combining vivid chthonic Ukrainian traditions and cosmopolitan artistic ideas. In Stalin's time, their work was presented in a much simpler way, as "understanding nature," something "everyday-rural." Their fantasies were justified because of their close connection to the landscape and environment, as they were "born" among the mountains, forests, fields, and steppes. Therefore, their fantasies were limited to natural borders but, in reality, they did not have boundaries themselves. Alla Horska was one of those artists who experimented with her artistic language, turning to folk traditions (including her references to Sobachko-Shostak). In a letter to Opanas Zalyvakha, she wrote: "The history of art is not the accumulation of facts, but development, [cultural] gait. Art is not the accumulation of components but their unity in development.” Art embodied these ideas in her mosaic panels created in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which seemed to her to be where it was possible to create more freely without the prying eyes of censors. Her works are a striking example of Ukrainian modernism but unfortunately, Horska was murdered by the KGB in December 1970, and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has been under constant attack since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2014. It remains unclear whether her artwork will survive or perish, as she did, at the hands of Russian aggressors.
Images of Horska are similar to those that can awaken the past. For example, one of them has a rather eloquent image: "Boryviter", a falcon resisting solid winds—that is, storms—and moving forward. This image was supposed to convey the unique nature of the Azov region, which was formed due to the steppe and sea landscape and political decisions, migration, and the desire to save the culture of the peoples.
ІІ.
In his 1993 curatorial text, the Polish curator Jerzy Onuch called Ukraine “the steppes of Europe”. Likewise, the Ukrainian-American historian Serhiy Plokhy called Ukraine “the Gate of Europe”. Both intellectuals speak about the importance and strategic nature of the country's geographical origin in the context of European mapping and, accordingly, the risks posed to Ukraine by its location. But can uncontrollable destructive winds hold back the gate, no matter how strong it might be? Can polluted air be prevented from crossing borders or stopped at the checkpoints of "safe countries"? How can contaminant freshwater from rivers whose chemical composition has been changed due to shelling and destruction not suddenly become part of global environmental concerns? Today's geography is very different from the traditional political map of the world, where it is easy to restrict the movement of communities through visas or the introduction of economic trade zones. Today's geography faces significant challenges, considering that it has given up on the principles of international law, dignity, human rights, and environment preservation in return for Russian rubles and gas.
Ukrainian artist Valentyn Raevsky once proposed trying to understand the boundaries of environmental needs. Following the Chornobyl disaster, he took photographs near the nuclear power plant, exploring post-industrial landscapes. He called this project "New Geography'' (1996), which endeavored to rethink colonial interests and how this destructive mindset influences politics and land. "Desert landscapes, artificially created coal heaps, uranium mining quarries, Chornobyl, abandoned and radiation-contaminated military equipment - all this creates a new earth's geography," the exhibition text mentioned. To a greater extent, Raevsky’s art project was concerned with a future global environmental catastrophe that would bring about total devastation and alienation. However, behind this natural element of the project are the specific names of those who have long concealed the ecological consequences of the Chornobyl disaster. Thanks to the international media and policy, the "visibility" of the tragedy became possible.
Today, silence is accompanied by social and environmental consequences of the Russian war in Ukraine. Ruined cities (not even individual houses, but entire settlements), chemical weapons, the shelling of chemical and industrial facilities, violations of nuclear power plants, mass killings, rapes, crimes against humanity, destruction of cultural values, and the presence of large the amount of military equipment – all this creates a new map of Europe, alters it from within. And the state of ecology extends these boundaries, affecting the lives of everyone in the world, including the aggressor itself.
In 2009, Raevsky created another eloquent project, “Preventive Borders”, which emphasized the militaristic and colonial nature of the battle for the future. The work is based on the image of a military aircraft, which according to the concept, uses biochemical weapons in the form of "cloned cockroaches," quickly filling the space. It is worth mentioning that the idea of biological weapons has not looked so funny for a long time, especially given Russian propaganda, which justified its shelling of a residential area in Kharkiv by the alleged presence of biological weapons there. Ukrainian Internet users joked that the only biological weapon was buckwheat left to spoil in the refrigerators of people who at the time were hiding for too long in basements from air raids carried out by the barbarians of the Russian Federation.
Symbolically, Raevsky's first project coincided with the year of the end of the First Chechen War and the second with the end of the Second Chechen War. None of these wars were stopped. Despite clear violations of international law, the Russians suppressed national movements and the desire for Chechen independence.
Art scholar Halyna Sklyarenko writes about the parallels that Raevsky drew: he argued with the ideas of Italian futurism about the "cult of war as purification," referred to the work "Letatlin" by Vladimir Tatlin, and to the militaristic projects of Leonardo da Vinci.
The avant-garde, which underlies these ideas, is another cornerstone of mapping. The memory of the past, the reflection on its tragic history, and the desire not to repeat those mistakes were the principles on which contemporary Europe was formed. These principles once seemed inviolable.
Walter Benjamin argued that it is necessary to seize the memories in the moment of danger because the memory is formed on a powerful image that will best convey the anxiety of the past and fear of the future. But this "the moment of danger" for Ukraine did not first occur on February 24, as it is often mistakenly believed. Nor did it in the spring of 2014 when the Russian Federation annexed Crimea and occupied parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine. Another date worth remembering is September 29, 2003: the Russian Federation intended to annex the Ukrainian island of Tuzla as a result of the construction of a dam to "protect against the blurring of the Taman Peninsula." The conflict between the two countries was then resolved after the signing of an agreement in November that same year, and Russia stopped building the dam. However, this situation did not affect the demarcation line of the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Kerch Strait and, even more so, did not prevent further strategic plans for "other protection." The history of rising tensions between both countries goes back as far as one is willing to look: it also coincided with the conclusion of the agreement on the Black Sea Fleet when Russia first announced its intentions regarding Sevastopol. The history of Ukraine and its culture provides countless "moments of danger," however, until recently no one except Ukrainians recognized them as such.
The so-called progress, the desire for "peace", "care policy" have always been masked by the aggressive expansionist politics of Moscow, which hid its strategic plans to prepare for a more effective program. Today, it has taken root in every Russian man and woman who has been talking about the need to rape Ukrainian women, kill civilians and steal private belongings from Ukrainian homes in the telephone conversations intercepted by the Ukrainian Security Service.
III.
Ukrainian-German historian Andriy Portnov began the introductory lecture for his summer course Ukraine between Central Europe and "the Russian World" in 2013 at the University of Greifswald with illustrations of various maps, such as how countries saw themselves on the world map at different points in history. Undoubtedly, each country has seen itself at the center of the globe and formed its strategic decisions on that basis. Ukraine should not turn the world into the center of Europe because its geographical center is already in Ukraine. However, Ukraine has a large territory on this map, which is situated between the EU and Russia, providing its own vision of political geography. This map seems to deprive it of its subjectivity, as it erroneously makes it a place where the interests of both intersect. For example, in the very same Odesa we explored earlier, another performance took place: Yuri Leiderman stood watching the shores of the Black Sea, standing with his back to spectators and passers-by. The artwork was entitled “If you face the South, Moscow will be far behind” (1983) and poses the problem of perception and the decolonial gaze.
Ukraine is often referred to as part of Central-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, a post-Soviet country, and in conversations with my colleagues from Belgium, it has been called part of Eurasia. But none of these terms concisely reflect the interests and positions of the country's society, which in recent years has manifested in its unwillingness to submit to tyranny. Undoubtedly, Ukrainian society and culture cannot change its geographical position, but it can challenge us to look at the world map from another perspective. In this sense, it’s worth considering political analysis and its emancipatory and subversive potential in relation to that vivid emancipatory energy and imagination from Ukrainian arts mentioned above. Andriy Portnov, in his most recent text written collaboration with Tetiana Portnova, “Full Historiographical Legitimacy to Ukraine”, referenced Mark von Hagen's 1995 text “Does Ukraine Have a History?”. Portnov and Portnova commented that Europe has paid attention to Ukraine only during today's brutal battles, and not during the 2004 Orange Revolution, or even in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The essay's authors warn not to be late in reviewing the history again. In other words, the latest moment of danger should not be ignored.
The utopia proposed by avant-garde artists in the early twentieth-century was never realized. Today, it is necessary to envision a new utopia based on experiences previously excluded from political and cultural life. Ukrainian history, for too many years, was written by barbarians who reveled in their victory over oppressed peoples. Russia now continues its imperialist policies in a bureaucratic way, pretending it has the right to participate in the U.N. Human Rights Council and other international bodies that were established to protect the sanctity of human life and dignity. The reality is that Russia is continuing to use its political influence and economic power to try and crush Ukraine, and they must be held accountable for it.
Now is the time for Ukraine and every other country that has been held back under Russia’s "care policy" to speak — and to be heard.