Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance

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.

Preface; Introduction; PART I Solidarity; Chapter 1 Antagonism and Revolutionary Aesthetics: Ukrainian Contemporary Art between the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan; Chapter 2 Field Notes on Subjectivity: Art, War, Articulationl Chapter 3 From “The Ukraine Question” and “The Woman Question” to Self-Determination: Revisiting 1920-30s Mass Politics, Revolution, and War in Today’s Ukraine; PART II Identity; Chapter 4 (de)Construction of “Post-Soviet” Visualities in Contemporary Ukrainian Photography; Chapter 5; Large-Scale Exhibitions and Identity Building in Ukraine in the Late 2000s - Early 2010s; Chapter 6 Observing the Bodies: Examination of the Human Experience of War and Trauma; Chapter 7 Ukrainian photographers opting for truth: From Soviet documentary photography to Russo-Ukrainian war images; PART III Decoloniality; Chapter 8 Rethinking (Post-)Soviet Landscape through Decolonial Art Practices, 2014-2022; Chapter 9 Becoming Local: Decolonial Practices in Visual Arts in Post-Maidan Ukraine; Chapter 10 From Postcolonial Past to Decolonial Future: Ukrainian Art in the Ages of Revolution and Resistance (2014-2024)