Veronika Synenka/Tie2.lt

Kostiantyn Doroshenko is a Ukrainian art critic, curator, and public intellectual in the field of culture. He has been writing about art and society since 1994, is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), and the author of the books Cognitive Demining and Kyiv Time. He has curated numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad.

We met in Vilnius, where Kostiantyn was giving a lecture on decolonization in art as part of a seminar organized by the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe at the European Humanities University. This is symbolic: in his work, he constantly connects the Ukrainian context with the international scene, from PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv to the National Museum of Montenegro or YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Azerbaijan.

For Lithuania, Doroshenko holds special significance: since 2017 he has been an official ambassador of the Republic of Užupis, has repeatedly participated in ArtVilnius, and also retains personal childhood memories connected to the country.

In our conversation, we discussed art in times of war, the decolonization of Ukrainian culture, new curatorial projects, and Lithuania’s role in his personal and professional biography.

Can art remain autonomous in a country at war, or does the context inevitably dictate themes and forms?

Art is always political; the artist’s position bears the imprint of events taking place in society. Everything Ukrainian artists create today is a testimony of wartime. Personal, intimate, escapist expressions are no less significant than documentary, generalizing, or symbolic ones. The Russian war has made Ukrainian art bolder and more subjective, because when life can be cut short at any moment, you do not postpone what you want to say. And you do not worry about following trends.

You have often spoken about art as a witness of an era. Do you see a new wartime aesthetic emerging now?

Contemporary art does not solve questions of aesthetics. Aesthetics appeals to the exemplary, thereby creating grounds for discrimination. This approach reached its peak in Nazi and Soviet art, although in postwar Western art we also see objectification of women, “fascism of the body” in gay aesthetics, and so on.

War prompts Ukrainian artists, as well as citizens in general, to be more attentive to individual experience. There is a societal demand for heroization, but both in artistic and commemorative practices, sensitivity to the individual is felt. War is made up of very specific trials, actions, and decisions of each person, a diversity of fates. This is reflected across the broad spectrum of Ukrainian art—from portraits of Anti-Authoritarian Armed Forces soldiers by David Chichkan, who died in August at the front, to the emergence of figurative elements in the practice of abstraction master Volodymyr Budnikov.

Your recent exhibitions—The Sun Rises in the West and Me and the Ark, Me and the Great Flood —are perceived as reflections on endings and beginnings. Do you now observe a rise of eschatological themes and narratives in art?

Eschatological themes in contemporary art are natural. We are witnessing a civilizational metamorphosis, a digital age that fundamentally changes both economic and ethical values. Descendants will give meaning to these times, they will typologize them. We can only live through them. However, I do not think in terms of beginning and end. Historical perspective allows us to perceive even radically accelerated changes due to technological innovations as a continuation of human development. I am confident that it is moving toward a deeper, more nuanced understanding of humanity. The barbarity of the Russian war, the rise of right-wing populism, alienation among people, polarization between states—all are the human response to global perturbation. The last convulsions of the old world, unwilling to yield to the future. But the future has already arrived. The rage provoked by information about violence, whether wartime or domestic, indicates its delegitimization, its abnormality for the collective consciousness.

The exhibitions you mentioned may seem different at first glance. In reality, they reflect what concerns me in art: revealing the human and humane. The Sun Rises in the West resulted from the interaction of artists with veterans of the metallurgical giant ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih. The project addressed questions of art as a mode of realization inherent to humans of any age or profession, issues of ageism, and inclusion. It is also a message to the world: even in war, Ukrainians continue to work, create, seek understanding, and change the global space. Kryvyi Rih steel is present in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Orbit Tower in London, and the Flame Towers in Baku. Yet production is primarily about people. Their stories are revealed in The Sun Rises in the West. For example, the work of artist Nastya Ekh is dedicated to worker Tetiana Nepomneshchyi. Handwritten memories by Tetiana became part of the installation. Connected with threads to her portrait, belongings, family photos, and a book about Kryvyi Rih, they speak to the intertwining and mutual influence of personal experiences that shape society.

Me and the Ark, Me and the Universal Flood at YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku is a reflection on the decolonization of knowledge, integrating into our perspective philosophical currents marginalized by Eurocentrism. In particular, it engages with Sufism and Hurufism in the work of the Azerbaijani poet and thinker Nasimi, whose intellectual courage was revolutionary not only for the 14th–15th centuries in which he lived, but also for today. He saw the purpose of humanity and the realization of human potential as a path to truth through honest recognition and the overcoming of destructive, dark forces—present in us as strongly as the drive to create.

The participation of artists from Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus was fundamental. We have listened enough to imperial capitals; the visions and decisions formed there have led the world to a series of terrible crises. It is time to consider the experiences of those who have endured crises provoked by imperialism and so-called realpolitik.

The installation Session by Lithuanian artist Rimas Sakalauskas at the Baku exhibition explores the theme of post-truth—a plague of the current epochal shift. 3D mapping grotesquely animates classical busts of ancient thinkers, and under physiological sounds, they spew red clots—an image of informational filth, distorted knowledge, and populism. This work impressed me when I first saw it at the Meno Niša gallery at ArtVilnius; in 2018 I presented it in Kyiv at the exhibition Užupis: Responsibility for Freedom. It is precisely Session that YARAT chose as the visual identity for the project Me and the Ark, Me and the Great Flood.

Let’s return to the exhibition about Užupis. Do you see anything in this Lithuanian model that could inspire the Ukrainian cultural space?

We have much to learn from Lithuania. In particular, from how the Lithuanian Institute of Culture operates. Its funding does not depend on fluctuations in the government budget. Transparency extends even to public information about official vehicles, and its responsibilities include preparing and coordinating the work of cultural attachés at Lithuanian embassies.

Another example is ArtVilnius. Under the professional and elegant leadership of Diana Stomiene and Sonata Baliuckaitė, the art fair maintains a balance of respectability and accessibility. It has become a renowned event on Europe’s artistic map. Each edition of ArtVilnius brings unexpected discoveries. There, I saw rare works by one of Ukraine’s most famous contemporary artists, Boris Mikhailov, from the collection of the French Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve. I also became acquainted with the works of unique artists Ina Budrytė, Severija Inčiriauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė, and later had the honor to collaborate with them as a curator.

The self-proclaimed creative republic of Užupis is inspiring and unique. It is more than a successful example of harmonious gentrification or a continuation of the European tradition of bohemian districts, like Copenhagen’s Christiania. Formally, it is impossible to transplant this experience elsewhere—it was born at the Vilnius intersection of cultures, humor, and worldview. But Užupis can be with you anywhere. Its constitution is one of the most humane texts at the turn of the millennium. I recommend reading it from time to time. Ukrainian film critic Aksinia Kurina wrote: “Utopia is not a picture of the future. Utopia is a struggle for the present.” Užupis is just that.

What is the current demand of the global audience/collector for Ukrainian art?

The art market is outside my primary interests. I recommend works to collectors I respect and introduce them to artists, but dealing in art contradicts curatorial practice. Regarding the general, non-commercial demand for Ukrainian art, we are still dealing with stereotypes that must be overcome. There is a desire to see us as victims, to pity us, and also an expectation of exoticism. There are international curators who have long worked with Ukrainian art and truly feel it—among them Monica Szewsxyk, Marta Kuzma, Kostantin Akinsha, Bart de Baere. But in most cases, we are perceived through a vague generalization of “Eastern Europeans” or, worse, lumped into the shapeless Russian cultural sphere. Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression has sparked interest, albeit mostly superficial. Few researchers genuinely wish to understand Ukrainian art as Galina Dekova did in curating the exhibition Fragments of Reality That Once Existed at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen. Much depends on what we express through art abroad. Our experience can and should address the universal human condition—we have not only endured trials—Russification, Holodomors, wars, Chernobyl—we have changed and continue to change the world, creating visions of its future.

Does the new generation of Ukrainian artists have a chance to move beyond the war as a primary reference point?

This is already happening. Ukrainian artists of various generations speak not only about war but about life. Young curators create projects that deepen understanding of complex processes of humanity’s development. Among these is the exhibition Heart That Beats: Focus on Queer Art of Ukraine, curated by Maria Vtorushyna and Anton Shebetko at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. A multi-layered artistic-documentary project dedicated to agriculture, one of the foundations of civilization, is being prepared for European representation by the artist Artem Humilevskyi. The project Deformationsby Roman Mykhailov also resonates widely, in which the artist reflects on the pressures of epochal change through metamorphoses of the body. Incidentally, in 2017 Mykhailov’s work Burn of the Real was shown in the non-commercial program of ArtVilnius. There are many such examples.

What are you reading now? What art has moved you recently?

For decades, I preferred books on philosophy, political science, history, and criticism. I want to especially mention Leonidas Donskis. His Problematic Identity and the Contemporary World helps to understand current processes in countries that have broken free from Moscow’s dictatorship. Fiction, by contrast, often felt like a waste of time. The shock of the Russian full-scale invasion reopened literary treasures to me. Poetry by Vitali Bilozir, Petrichor – The Smell of Earth After Rain by Volodymyr Rafeenko, and Medusa’s Gaze by Lybko Deresh became events.

For a residency in Berlin organized by Ambasada Kultury with the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, I brought The Moabit Chronicles by Yuri Leiderman, a special text by an artist-intellectual—passionate, demanding, and captivating. I recently met the author in person. This interaction nourishes both mind and emotions. I am currently reading Leiderman’s Stopping the Flows—a dense, demanding text. Interacting with it is like an unpredictable expedition.

In visual art, the work most resonant with the present for me is the installation by Berlin-based artist of Belarusian descent Anna Chkolnikova. Her works in the project After All, curated by Conny Becker, transformed the space of DIEresidenz Berlin into a sensory imprint of a world in which predictability no longer exists. We can only feel our way through reality amidst chaos, accepting imperfection, vulnerability, and instability in both the surroundings and ourselves. In the work Answer, viewers are tempted by illegibly written letters. Reading someone else’s correspondence violates privacy, yet the letters are shamelessly open on the table. Succumbing to curiosity, we lean over and recognize only the emotions embedded in the handwriting. The Cliffhanger—an ascetic gray draping blocks a passage in the wall, framed by red railings. The fabric descends down the stairs as if into an abyss. To peek behind it, to walk down the stairs—it is frightening and impossible. Uncertainty, the effort to hold onto one’s psyche by clinging to familiar signs, ghosts of stability or well-being—these are honest sensations of our time.