Dr Svitlana Biedarieva is an award-winning art historian, artist, and curator. She received her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. She is the editor of the book Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991-2021 (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2021) and co-editor of At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020). In 2022/23, Svitlana was selected as the George F. Kennan Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, and the Non-Resident Visiting Fellow at the George Washington University for her research, the CEC ArtsLink International Fellow for her curatorial work, and the Prince Claus Seed Award Laureate for her artistic work. Svitlana has published her texts in such academic journals and media outlets as October, ArtMargins Online, Space and Culture, post at MoMA, Revue Critique d’Art, Financial Times, The Burlington Contemporary, Hyperallergic, and The Art Newspaper, among others. Currently, Svitlana is working on two books: on Ukraine’s decoloniality for Palgrave Macmillan and art and resistance for Routledge.
Most recent on decolonising Ukrainian art:
Teaching
Visiting course at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich
Reframing decolonization: Contemporary Ukrainian, Eastern European, and Latin American art
Conferences and publications
Podcast Documentation of War in Ukrainian Art. Decolonisation and Ukrainian Identity, Silicon Curtain, 6 September 2023
Panel Discussion Also Postcolonial, AICA International (Slovakia), 19 April 2023
Article Decolonization and Disentanglement in Ukrainian Art. Post at MoMA, 2 June 2022.
Lecture Decolonial Strategies in New Ukrainian Art. National Gallery of Denmark. 31 May 2022.
Text Ukrainian Wartime Art: Anti-Colonial Resistance in a Decolonial Age. immediations, No. 19 (2022)
Text Art Communities at Risk: On Ukraine, October, Vol. 179 (Winter 2022)
Edited books:
Svitlana Biedarieva, ed., Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, Stuttgart: ibidem Press and New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
This volume focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future.
Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the east of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.
With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.
Svitlana Biedarieva and Hanna Deikun, eds., At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019/ La línea del frente. El arte ucraniano, 2013–2019/ Na linii frontu.
Ukrains’ke mystetstvo, 2013–2019, Mexico City and Kyiv: Editorial 17 and International “Renaissance” Foundation, 2020.
The catalog of the exhibition “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019” speaks about the turbulent political and social situation in Ukraine of the last seven years, including such events as the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea, and the war with Russia. It focuses on the materials of 13 Ukrainian artists’ exhibition at the National Museum of Cultures in Mexico City from September 2019 to February 2020. This exhibition was part of a larger interdisciplinary project realized in Mexico City that also included a series of panel discussions with the participation of Ukrainian, Mexican, and British researchers and artists at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance and eight documentary screenings at the National Cinematheque. This trilingual publication (English-Spanish-Ukrainian) documents the first large-scale project in Latin America which looked at the contemporary Ukrainian art scene and the situation in the country. The exhibition was further presented at the “Oseredok” Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre in Winnipeg, Canada. Participating artists: Piotr Armianovski, Yevgenia Belorusets, Svitlana Biedarieva, Zhanna Kadyrova, Yuri Koval, Roman Mikhaylov, Roman Minin, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Yevgen Nikiforov, Kristina Norman, Mykola Ridnyi, Anton Popernyak, and works from the collection of the Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Daniel Buren, Leandro Erlich, and Pascale Marthine Tayou), César Martínez Silva, and Paola Paz Yee. Texts by Yevgenia Belorusets, Svitlana Biedarieva, Uilleam Blacker, Hanna Deikun, Oleksandra Gaidai, Olesya Khromeychuk, Ricardo Macias Cardoso, César Martínez Silva, Jean Meyer, Olia Mykhailiuk, Maryna Rabinovych, Vsevolod Samokhvalov, Paola Paz Yee, and Mykola Ridnyi.
Svitlana Biedarieva 