Kostiantyn Doroshenko / Tie2.lt

Artist Sofiya Martyniuk was among the tens of thousands of residents of Irpin who were forced to flee the city following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In Charlotte, North Carolina, she created a mural to draw attention to the fate of her hometown. After Irpin was liberated, she returned to take part in its recovery. Sofiia convinced the city authorities of the need to involve experts from the arts and cultural sector in commemorating the events of the war in the urban environment. The approaches developed in Irpin through a careful dialogue between the community and experts, facilitated by Martyniuk, are now regarded as exemplary across Ukraine. In April, Sofiya became head of the newly established Memorialization Sector within the Culture Department of Irpin City Council.

Today, the commemoration of Russia’s war against Ukraine, its fallen defenders and civilian victims in Irpin is being shaped through cooperation between the city authorities, commemoration experts and the arts community. You were among those who initiated this process after returning from the United States. What prompted you to make that decision?

For me, first and foremost, it is deeply personal — when war literally comes to your home. My parents and I left Irpin without knowing whether we would ever be able to return. Our home was in territory occupied by Russian forces. Traces of their presence in the house and the consequences of shelling remained physically present in our everyday lives for a long time. War ceased to be an abstract concept. After the city was liberated, the local authorities called on volunteers, architects, urban planners, artists and other professionals to take part in its recovery. I could not stand aside. I wanted to be useful to the city that is my home and contribute to its recovery through my own expertise. But I soon realised that recovery is not only about physically rebuilding the city. It is also about the need to rethink ourselves, our city and our shared future after the experience of war. What is our identity? Who are we today? How do we live with this experience going forward? What should we remember, and how? This process has profoundly changed my life and professional trajectory. My artistic practice gradually moved into the background, while more strategic work came to the fore. I continue to learn, develop professionally and bring into my work what I study and observe in other countries and communities. But it is fundamentally important to me not simply to import ready-made models, but to interpret them within our own context — through the experience of Irpin, its residents and everything we have lived through.

Today, Irpin is known around the world not only because of the tragedy of the occupation, but also as a city whose revival began immediately after liberation, driven above all by the efforts of its residents. Irpin’s tragic and heroic history also attracted the attention of Banksy. All of this has made the city attractive to artists from different regions of Ukraine and even other countries who want to make their own artistic statements in its public spaces. How is this being managed today?

There are several dimensions to this issue. On the one hand, since 2022 Irpin has gained global visibility as a hero city. At the same time, it is fundamentally important to us that it does not become a memorial city whose identity is defined exclusively by the experience of war. Historically, Irpin has been a place for meeting, recreation, cultural life and creative activity. This cultural context is an important part of the city’s identity, and it is something we need not only to preserve but also to develop. The presence of artists and artistic initiatives in Irpin’s public spaces is therefore entirely natural. At the same time, since 2022 the community has received far more proposals for creative and cultural projects, and it is important to distinguish between their motivations, quality and potential impact on the urban environment. Banksy’s work, for example, was intended to draw international attention to the experience of the liberated areas of the Kyiv region. But not every artistic initiative offered to the city under the banner of support or as a “gift” automatically serves its needs and long-term interests. Some projects were more likely seeking to capitalise on Irpin’s media visibility. When I began working at the city council, it became clear that the city’s interaction with the arts community required a more systematic approach. Public space is not a neutral place where you can simply add one artistic object or another. Every such initiative has its own context, author and concept, and it influences how the city is perceived by both residents and visitors. For me, it was therefore important to create a process in which these decisions would not be made unilaterally or on an ad hoc basis, but would take professional expertise and the long-term impact on the urban environment into account. At the same time, it became clear that local government institutions do not always have the expertise required to evaluate artistic, architectural or design proposals. The creative sector has its own professional standards, approaches and assessment criteria, and meaningful engagement with it requires appropriate expertise. For this reason, the mayor established an advisory commission to review artistic initiatives proposed for public spaces. Its members include not only representatives of the city council and elected councillors, but also independent professionals — experts, architects, designers and art historians. The commission is not intended to restrict artistic initiatives; rather, it is a mechanism for treating public space responsibly. The commission’s work has already shown that not every proposal, even when presented as a “gift to the city”, is necessarily beneficial to the community. Some may carry reputational or ethical risks. It is therefore important for us not to pursue populist solutions, but to create artistic projects that also resonate within the professional arts community.

Murals are a separate issue. Before the full-scale invasion, local authorities in many Ukrainian cities used them to decorate unattractive buildings, employing visual “wow effects” to distract residents from municipal problems. Families of the fallen sometimes see murals as a striking and relatively quick way of commemorating heroes in their hometowns. Murals are also a medium you have worked with as an artist. What is your view of their use as a form of commemoration?

Murals are actually quite a complex genre because they function not only as works of art but also as part of public space. You cannot simply hang a mural on a gallery wall and replace it when it is no longer relevant. It interacts with architecture, the scale of the city, its visual and colour environment, and people’s everyday lives. It is seen not only by those who deliberately choose to visit an exhibition, but by virtually everyone who passes by. I worked in monumental art for more than ten years, so I understand this responsibility very well. A mural can be created relatively quickly, but it remains in the city for years. That is why it has always been important to me not simply to fulfil a commission, but to understand why a particular work should appear in that particular place, what it adds to the space and what remains after the initial impression has faded. When it comes to commemoration, I approach murals with caution, particularly personalised murals featuring portraits of the fallen. I completely understand a family’s desire to see the image of a loved one in their hometown. It is an entirely human desire. But when we are talking about public space, we need to look at it more broadly than from the perspective of a single family. Today, for example, more than 300 service members from the Irpin community have been killed. If we created an individual mural for every one of them, we simply would not have enough walls. But that is not even the main issue. Such a practice creates a precedent of inequality: why does the memory of one person receive a large public image while another does not? Who makes that decision? And according to what criteria? That is why I believe cities should not simply respond to emotion in such situations, but should seek forms that allow us to address memory systematically. Perhaps instead of a portrait of a particular person, it could be an artistic image that speaks about the experience of many people. Perhaps it could be an entirely different type of memorial space. Not every need to commemorate someone necessarily has to take the form of a mural.

So I am not against murals as a genre, nor do I believe they should be prohibited. What I oppose is the idea of the mural as a universal way to decorate something, express gratitude or commemorate someone. For me, a good mural is one that has both artistic and social value, takes the context of the place into account and is created with respect for the people who will live alongside it. Sometimes the best decision is to leave a wall exactly as it is and find another form for remembrance.

You were among the initiators of the War Events Archive and the online platform Book of Memory — projects that propose a contemporary form of memorialization distinct from the Soviet tradition. How are these projects developing, and how are you searching for a language through which we can speak about this war?

First and foremost, these projects are intended to document the events of the war, record crimes, collect people’s testimonies, thoughts and memories, and build a body of source material that may in the future become a foundation for understanding and memorializing these events.

Today, it is difficult to imagine a single, comprehensive memorial form dedicated to the war because we are still living through the process itself. We do not yet have sufficient historical distance, we cannot see the full scale of events, and often we have barely had time to reflect on and process one tragedy before another occurs. This does not mean that memorialization must wait until the war is over. On the contrary, the need to remember already exists and has a powerful existential dimension. We want to document what is happening while we ourselves are still witnesses to it — while we are alive. Working with memory can involve documentation and the creation of temporary memorial spaces that remain flexible and can change along with reality. All of this is about making different experiences visible and acknowledging them; about honouring and respecting the fallen; about compassion and support for their families; and about reflecting on who we are today and what we are fighting for. That is why working with sources, oral history interviews, documents, photographs and other forms of testimony is particularly important today. In Irpin, for example, we are creating a separate archive documenting the city’s experience of combat. The events of February and March 2022 unfolded extremely rapidly, while resistance by local residents was often spontaneous and decentralised. Today, we are trying to untangle this complex chain of events by comparing the testimonies of different participants so that, in the future, we can speak about the defence of the city as comprehensively and impartially as possible. This is also important because books and documentary films that have already been produced, however valuable they may be, inevitably represent an author’s particular perspective to some degree. Working with a large body of testimony allows us to see events from different perspectives and to document contradictions, complementary accounts and diverse experiences.

The Book of Memory deals with a different but related dimension: the life stories of those who were killed. We try to speak about people not only through their military biographies or the circumstances of their deaths, but above all through who they were — their professions, families, habits, dreams, values and the things they did during their lives. This allows us to move away from the Soviet tradition of reducing a person to a heroic image and instead restore their individuality. It is precisely here that a new Ukrainian language of memory is taking shape today — one that is more humane, more diverse and less monumental. It can exist not only in the form of a monument, but also through cultural events, educational projects, themed cafés or bookshops, and public spaces.

Such practices not only preserve memory but also help continue the work of those who were killed, fulfil their dreams and speak about them without excessive heroisation or simplification.

The city has invited four Ukrainian curators to work on interpreting sites associated with the tragic events of Irpin’s occupation and liberation. How does the interdisciplinary laboratory Irpin: Architecture of Memory work, and what results does the city expect from it?

Today, the Irpin community has a list of sites of memory intended to preserve stories and experiences that are important to us. At the same time, the list is not exhaustive. Some sites were identified through public consultations in 2024, while others continue to be added as new research, initiatives and information emerge. Some of these sites have already taken shape, while others remain temporary or symbolic. Another important layer of the local landscape of memory consists of places and events connected with the defence of Irpin in February and March 2022. Although the war continues, the defence of Irpin is already a completed chapter that we can analyse with a certain degree of temporal distance. Four years allow us to compare different testimonies, identify connections between events, decisions and their consequences, and gradually develop a more comprehensive understanding of what happened.

It is in this context that we are implementing the project Irpin: Commemoration. Architecture of Memory, initiated by the Memorialization Sector of Irpin City Council in cooperation with the charitable organisation Sigma Irpin and with the participation of the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art. The project aims to help the city engage with the memory of the war professionally, ethically and openly, without relying on ready-made formulas. Central to this is building an ethical dialogue between the community, local authorities, artists and experts, in which every side has an opportunity to be heard. We invited four curators to join the laboratory, and each of them formed an interdisciplinary team of architects, artists, urban planners and researchers. The open call received 143 applications, from which 20 participants were selected. Each team works with a specific site of memory, researching its history, testimonies and the experiences of people directly affected by the events associated with it. These are four very different cases: the car cemetery, which serves as material evidence of the evacuation of civilians; the Alley of Heroes, featuring portraits of fallen defenders; a network of six checkpoints connected with the defence of the city; and a memorial space dedicated to civilians who were killed, located on the banks of the Irpin River. In other words, we are deliberately not working with a single universal type of memorial, but with different ways of remembering and different experiences of war. Crucially, we do not begin with form. We first investigate what happened at a particular site, what stories are associated with it and how it is perceived by residents, families of the fallen, veterans and other groups. Only after this process of discussion can we identify an appropriate architectural or artistic form. The immediate outcome should be architectural concepts and technical documentation for four sites of memory. But equally important is developing a methodology that the city can continue to use in the future: how to interpret tragic events, involve the community and bring together historical, architectural, artistic and social dimensions. In a broader sense, this represents a shift from spontaneous decisions towards a systematic approach to the city’s landscape of memory. We are not trying to create a definitive interpretation of Irpin’s memory at this stage. Rather, we want to establish a professional and open process through which that memory can take shape — and to understand how to remember a war in a city that continues to live.