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The building housing the Nahirna 22 arts collective was damaged by air strikes<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Nahirna 22<\/p>\n
The studios have been a wartime refuge for artists and visitors to \u201cshare their feelings, pain, fear, all emotions in their artworks\u201d, in which they can \u201ccreate a new wave of Ukrainian identity\u201d that makes \u201cresistance visible\u201d in Ukraine and abroad, Nyrkova says.<\/p>\n
Heritage saved<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Mykhailo Boychuk State Academy of Decorative Applied Arts and Design in Kyiv, named after a seminal Ukrainian Modernist executed in 1937 during Stalin\u2019s Great Terror, was hit during a 2024 Russian missile strike<\/a>. In July 2025, contractors were able to save surviving works and fragments from the academy\u2019s archives, including \u201cmany objects of painting, weaving, embroidery, ceramics, jewellery and sacred art\u201d and student works, according to the academy\u2019s director, Olena Osadcha. Their efforts were supported by Unesco\u2019s Ukraine office, the Japanese government and Ukraine\u2019s culture ministry.<\/p>\n Workers assess a damaged painting recovered from the bombed Boychuk Academy<\/p>\n Photos: Bohdan Poshyvailo, archive of the Maidan Museum\/ACURE<\/p>\n \u201cSurprisingly, almost intact icons, works made in the technique of hot enamel, mosaics and frescoes were found,\u201d Osadcha says. \u201cAmong the unique items are linocuts from the late 1920s by the artist Maria Kotlyarevska, a representative of the Boychuk school.\u201d Costumes, textiles and embroidery were among the most damaged works.<\/p>\n A new programme at the academy, titled Restoration and Reconstruction of Works of Decorative Art, builds on this practical experience for conservation work that lies ahead. The academy sponsored a student architectural competition to design new facilities and has hosted international conferences as well as the BoychukFest. The festival featured an exhibition of 25 years of textile, embroidery and costumes created by students and teachers that were extracted intact from the rubble, and the Symbols of Identity project highlighting \u201ckey symbols of Ukrainian statehood\u201d, especially the trident (the emblem of Ukraine), Osadcha says. In April and May 2025, a contemporary art exhibition, Body\/Fragility, addressed the missile strike while also serving as \u201cproof that, despite the war, life goes on\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n A Unesco spokesperson tells The Art Newspaper that \u201cdocumentation is scheduled to be completed early next year\u201d for \u201cfull reconstruction of the affected buildings\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018A living chain of resistance\u2019<\/p>\n Ihor Poshyvailo, who coordinated rescue work at the Boychuk Academy as co-founder of the Agency for Cultural Resilience (Acure) and director of the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity, tells The Art Newspaper that \u201cmore than 90% of the items recovered from the rubble were stabilised, cleaned, documented and packed\u201d and \u201cover 560 artworks were triaged from the debris\u201d. Kotlyarevska\u2019s linocuts, for example, were \u201ccleaned, and preserved in acid-free folders\u201d and \u201caround 150 textiles, canvas paintings carefully removed from stretchers and rolled onto tubes\u201d.<\/p>\n Poshyvailo says \u201cthe sheer number of works saved\u2014despite lying for more than a year under debris\u2014proves that cultural rescue operations, though arduous and dangerous, are worthwhile and necessary\u201d. The \u201c71 museum workers, cultural first-aiders, restorers, lecturers and students from 21 institutions\u201d who gathered at the academy for the training and stabilisation work \u201cformed a living chain of resistance through culture\u201d, carrying on even when 25 people were killed in Kyiv by a Russian air strike.<\/p>\n Reverence for folk art is a source of Ukrainian resilience<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cWhile Russia bombs Ukraine\u2019s schools, museums and archives, Ukrainians are preserving the very memory those attacks attempt to erase,\u201d he says, citing reverence for folk art as a source of Ukrainian resilience. Cultural workers have also had to compensate for the slashing of much US funding under the Trump administration. \u201cEuropean institutions and Unesco help to fill part of this gap, but they are not enough,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, in its latest collaboration with Ukrzaliznytsia (the Ukrainian railways), commissioned a public installation by Lesia Khomenko for the city\u2019s main train station. \u201cThere is a need for creating monuments, specifically for the war,\u201d says Bj\u00f6rn Geldhof, the centre\u2019s artistic director. \u201cHow do you deal with monuments, with public art at a time when everything is still going on?\u201d He curated the installation and a solo show of Khomenko\u2019s work at the PinchukArtCentre.<\/p>\n Lesia Khomenko\u2019s new installation Motion, at Kyiv\u2019s main railway station<\/p>\n Photo: \u00a9 Ela Bialkowska<\/p>\n Khomenko created Motion, a 21m-high, 12m-wide 600kg installation during a 1\u00bd-month residence at the station through which 60,000 passengers pass daily; \u201ca place essential for Ukraine\u2019s survival\u201d, Geldhof says. He described Motion as a \u201cpublic, monumental piece, but in a very temporal sense\u201d, a kind of \u201canti-monument\u201d in a style merging Impressionism and Futurism. Positioned opposite two escalators, it engages \u201cwith the reality of the place and the architecture of the venue\u201d.<\/p>\n Soviet monumentalism deconstructed<\/p>\n Geldhof says, \u201cthis work is so amazing because it captures in a single image what Ukraine is today and how it has been able to defend itself as effectively as it has because it is continuously in motion\u201d, with individuals taking on multiple roles, for example \u201ca florist and drone maker\u201d, a phenomenon he says is \u201cnot necessarily understood in the West\u201d.<\/p>\n Khomenko says she sought to capture \u201cthe \u2018motion\u2019 of time and history\u201d, using the escalator as a visual tool to convey the metaphor. Working on the installation was also an opportunity to \u201cdeconstruct the idea of Soviet monumental art\u201d, which was built into the train station during a post-Second World War reconstruction.<\/p>\n \u201cWe invited a group of people to take part in the photo shoot that I used as a source for my composition,\u201d she says. \u201cA real soldier, a veteran, a war photographer, railway workers, rescuers, med-evacuators and army doctors, civilians of different ages, volunteers, a barista and an artist were stepping down the escalator while having their picture taken on a camera with long exposure to illustrate the idea of motion. This effect helped me to blend people together.\u201d<\/p>\n Coffee is key<\/p>\n \u201cAt night-time there are heavy Russian drone and missile attacks and scary explosions hit our buildings,\u201d she says. \u201cSo people usually are very sleepy in the morning. That\u2019s why I depicted the barista in my piece. The coffee is important.\u201d<\/p>\n Iryna Dobrovetska, an illustrator from Odesa, lost multiple works displayed in and near Kyiv in the early days of the invasion, including a giant pysanka (traditional decorated Ukrainian Easter egg) that she created for a 2016 festival.<\/p>\n The \u201cspecial kindness and understanding\u201d that she encountered when she came to London as a refugee in 2022 kept her going, she says. She was shortlisted and commended by the judges of Britain\u2019s Folio Book Illustration Award 2025<\/a> for her illustrations of Rapunzel. The recognition coincided with her apartment in Odesa being severely damaged by a Russian strike in July. \u201cI believe that one should not submit to fate,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is always the possibility of some way out.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/395dda58d01bf20b4060937620f106bf27c63ee0-1044x1566.jpg\"\/)
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