The next textual content is a chapter from Decolonising Artwork: Past the Apparent (2025), a publication that summarizes and paperwork a public programme of the identical identify from the Ukrainian Pavilion on the 59th Worldwide Artwork Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
academia will discuss decolonization
it should discuss it on a regular basis
however except the few
it won’t discuss your father, brothers, sisters, pals
these in chilly trenches, decolonizing by means of de-occupation
that won’t be epistemic sufficient to be mentioned
Darya Tsymbaliuk, DO NOT DESPAIR. a letter to a scholar whose homeland might be attacked by Russia subsequent
I’m scripting this in March 2024, two years after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and a 12 months and a half after I used to be invited to talk as a part of the Ukrainian Pavilion on the Venice Biennale, which this 12 months opens in mid-April. Proper now, Andrii Dostliev and I are ending a venture which was commissioned for it, ‘Comfort Work’.
Regardless of the horrors of the struggle, 2022 additionally introduced hope: hope that, by making a consolidated effort and partnering with like minded allies Ukrainian cultural professionals would possibly be capable of shift, make clear and in the end undermine the privilege and centrality of Russian tradition.
As my colleagues and I’ve written in earlier articles, the start of the struggle in February 2022 marked a turning level as Ukraine shifted from a post-colonial state to a decolonial one. Conversations in Venice have been stuffed with optimistic expectations of change, and lots of the contributors, I feel, envisioned themselves as an lively a part of it.
I keep in mind the second firstly of the struggle once I realized that the rationale why Ukrainian cultural illustration on the earth is so weak – right here and elsewhere I take advantage of the phrase ‘Ukrainian’ in its civic and political, not ethnic dimension – is above all the dearth of obtainable platforms for public expression. The fact, nonetheless, turned out to be much more complicated.
Andrii Dostliev, ‘Education fails in mysterious ways’, riso-type posters, 2023. Picture courtesy of artist
As Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman write of their e-book The Empire of Trauma, the earthquake which levelled a number of Armenian cities in 1988, leaving tens of hundreds lifeless and over 100 thousand wounded, additionally grew to become a politically vital occasion as a result of ‘in practical terms, it gave the West its first opportunity to enter this region.’ Fassin and Rechtman attribute this to the truth that the Soviet world ‘had hitherto been firmly closed to all outside interference.’ Nonetheless, over thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, residents of territories that have been as soon as compelled to be a part of it have repeatedly discovered that the eye of the West is extraordinarily selective and never essentially depending on how open a rustic’s area is. A pure catastrophe or a struggle at dwelling might certainly draw consideration to the affected area for a short while – with international media retailers overlaying occasions as in the event that they’ve simply found your a part of the world on the map. In 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea and components of Donetsk and Luhansk areas, after which when the full-scale invasion started eight years later, the so-called collective West seen Ukraine as if for the primary time, considerably shocked to comprehend that between Berlin (or, if you’re very fortunate, Warsaw) and Moscow lies not an countless and anonymous wilderness however a territory with residing individuals who have their very own language and tradition however whose houses are being destroyed as I write.
Andrii Dostliev, ‘Dead Pixels’, silkscreen poster, 2022. Picture courtesy of artist
The consequence of your nation being part of traumatic geography on the Western psychological map is a really particular type of consideration and recognition that your society receives. The Oscar awarded to the movie 20 Days in Mariupol by Mstyslav Chernov is a vivid instance: it’s laborious to think about a Western director beginning their speech with the phrases ‘I wish this film had never been made.’
The wave of curiosity in Ukrainian tradition provoked by the full-scale invasion has undoubtedly led to the creation of latest public platforms and alternatives to manifest Ukraine’s cultural presence. Nonetheless, this consideration has been given on fairly inflexible phrases. It wasn’t due to a sudden realization that the big selection of cultural kinds that exist inside Ukraine aren’t any much less invaluable than these of Russia or the West. This scrutiny comes with an embedded hierarchy and is a type of non permanent solidarity with a group that’s being bodily destroyed by a stronger drive. The cultural worth of the product that was given public publicity – notably firstly of the full-scale invasion – was due to this fact a secondary concern. The principal one was that its creators have been from Ukraine and might be supplied with cultural humanitarian support.
In consequence, we witnessed a surge in Ukraine-related occasions overseas which have been typically of poor inventive high quality. They have been organized by establishments that needed to assist however typically lacked each the experience to create a top quality product and the flexibility to comprehend their shortfall. Exhibitions devoted to Ukraine featured artists whose Ukrainian origin was the one factor they’d in frequent, lacking any clear curatorial message.
The flooding of those occasions into the cultural house blurred the boundaries between emergency residencies or exhibitions organized as a gesture of solidarity {and professional}, quality-based Ukrainian tasks. Furthermore, the non permanent hype led cultural staff, a few of whom had constructed their whole careers overseas, to be perceived as mere Ukrainian our bodies, no matter their skilled stage. They have been seen as bearers of trauma and their actions framed solely in identity-based classes.
The obvious demand for high quality Ukrainian artwork which ‘can do more than speak of war and act as a perpetual reminder of the urgency of the situation’ versus artwork which fails to ‘override fixed and binary categories of identity’ excludes a number of essential issues. Firstly, Ukrainian artwork which is anticipated to be ‘more than national’ and strikes past ethnic dimension is framed in synthetic classes of nationwide id primarily by critics’ descriptions, curators’ work, and the viewers’s notion, which is a symptom of taking a look at Ukraine by means of the lens of colonial Russia (or, as within the case of Poland, conditioned by its personal colonial previous too). It’s not possible to make ‘post-national’ artwork if those that have a look at it and people who describe it nonetheless understand the work by way of the writer’s nationality and see its ‘Ukrainianness’ as its important attribute.
One other drawback with offering public platforms to symbolize Ukrainian tradition within the West is that such platforms typically create a ‘ghetto’ of kinds, the place solely Ukrainians (refugees or diaspora) and some like-minded allies attend occasions devoted to Ukraine. This format maintains the present colonial hierarchy: it signifies solidarity however lacks any emancipatory potential as a result of it doesn’t contain integration with a broader viewers past the slender pool of Ukrainian sympathizers, nor does it present the potential for actual affect. The target market for decolonial change merely don’t come, and a Ukrainian bubble due to this fact arises, the place an area is formally offered for the illustration of the ‘emotional and traumatized Ukrainian voice’, however that voice isn’t heard.
To the west of the Oder river, this smattering of charitable deeds was additionally a method of redemption: it’s simpler to offer Ukrainian artists with house in an establishment for a one-day occasion between deliberate exhibitions than to ponder how many years, even centuries of deal with the tradition of a neighbouring colonizer and the adoption of its gaze as default contributed to the normalization of Russia’s wars and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The proliferation of Ukraine-related decolonial occasions paradoxically serves as an alternative to actual decolonial (learn: structural) modifications.
Andrii Dostliev, from ‘It’s decolonial‘ collection, 2023. Photographs courtesy of artist
For the reason that starting of the full-scale invasion, I’ve repeatedly discovered myself in conditions the place breaking the sample of making a ‘Ukrainian ghetto’ and the attendance of non-Ukrainians at Ukrainian occasions grew to become a supply of hysteria for Western hosts: ‘Who are these people in the audience? Do you know them? Are they your friends?’
Now, two years on, it may be argued that what we initially perceived as a shift in the direction of decolonization was only a non permanent Ukrainian quota with little potential for structural change. Quite the opposite, establishments – each in tradition and academia – have mobilized current sources to protect their established order, making ready to contest even the potential risk to their place of privilege.
Numerous methods of appropriating the decolonial discourse and instrumentalizing it to protect the present colonial hierarchy could be cited right here as examples. Marking the time period ‘Russian culture’ as problematic has led many cultural figures who had constructed their skilled id in affiliation with it to unsubscribe from the symbolic house. Abruptly, everybody stopped being Russian, however continued to defend their skilled proper to talk on behalf of your complete area of the previous Russian colonies. Individuals who left Russia after 2022, having already constructed their careers there, abruptly stopped utilizing the phrase ‘Russia’ of their bios and/or have found some family members – at all times feminine: grandmothers or aunts, for some motive – in Ukraine or different former colonies, the place they spent plenty of time as kids, having fun with tasty nationwide meals and the nice sounds of a considerably humorous native language. Symbolically leaving the set of these focused by the decision to ‘decolonize Russian culture’, all these people started to think about themselves a part of a group that might be now in control of ‘decolonisation’ – or fairly, the preservation of the present colonial hierarchy, however this time in a decolonial wrapper. Western establishments supported this relabelling, readily offering an area for self-proclaimed ex-Russians to symbolize the whole lot of a area which was as soon as Russia’s empire.
Images from the efficiency ‘Grandma from Zhytomyr’, Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin, 2024. Picture courtesy of artist
The sudden search in a single’s household ancestry for extra oppressed heritage has nothing to do with precise decolonization by means of addressing colonial erasure or bringing again plurality. It’s, in reality, the other of in search of decolonial justice: so long as the id of a Russian curator – or some other public determine – supplies privileged entry to institutional sources, everyone seems to be glad. One other problematic facet of such shifts in id is the understanding of 1’s connection to the Ukrainian context by way of ‘primitive ultranationalism’ – actually by means of blood and soil, which ignores the civic, social and political dimensions. From this angle, belonging to a sure cultural group is one thing one is born into; it has nothing to do with aware alternative or the performative, on a regular basis part of that tradition, which is itself diminished to ethnic kitsch. We due to this fact have a peculiar paradox: the reappropriation of the colonized id and the simultaneous preservation of the colonial gaze on this id. (It’s value mentioning that Western researchers historically attribute ‘bad nationalism’ – monoethnic, monocultural, aggressive in the direction of something that isn’t its constituent – to previously colonized nations that gained statehood.)
What ought to we then do? If Ukraine desires to maintain alive the dialogue about decolonial approaches – and I hope it does – we should always focus, firstly, on creating new horizontal connections with representatives of different former colonized communities which have comparable experiences of oppression. It’s with them that, for my part, the Ukrainian cultural group ought to primarily interact and unite.
This essay was first revealed in Decolonising Artwork: Past the Apparent. Be taught extra in regards to the publication right here.
