Women at War: Ukrainian Artists Document Conflict Through Feminist Historiography
The exhibition Women at War, curated by Monika Fabijanska, showcases the work of twelve Ukrainian artists who explore the impact of the Russian war on Ukraine from 2014 to the 2022 invasion, with an emphasis on gendered perspectives. Launched at Fridman Gallery in New York during the summer of 2022, the exhibition will travel across North America until 2025, including stops at the Chicago Cultural Center from August to December 2024 and San Diego State University Art Gallery in fall 2025. Featured artists, such as Yevgenia Belorusets and Dana Kavelina, challenge conventional war narratives by focusing on victims, with Kavelina’s 2019 drawings and Belorusets’s Victories of the Defeated (2014–2017) being particularly noted. Fabijanska organized the exhibition swiftly after the invasion, with backing from Fridman Gallery and Kyiv’s Voloshyn Gallery, highlighting feminist artistic approaches.
Key facts
- Women at War features twelve Ukrainian artists addressing the Russian war from 2014 to 2022
- The exhibition premiered at Fridman Gallery, New York in summer 2022 and tours North America through 2025
- Artists include Yevgenia Belorusets, Dana Kavelina, Alevtina Kakhidze, Lesia Khomenko, Alena Grom, and Anna Scherbyna
- Dana Kavelina displayed drawings of raped women alongside Soviet military paintings at the Kmytiv Museum in 2019
- Yevgenia Belorusets created the series Victories of the Defeated (2014–2017) documenting Donbas miners
- Lesia Khomenko drew portraits of fighters during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity on Maidan Square in Kyiv
- The exhibition includes diaristic works like Olia Fedorova’s poems from the Battle of Kharkiv and Vlada Ralko’s Lviv Diary (2022)
- Curator Monika Fabijanska organized the show with Fridman Gallery and Voloshyn Gallery, shipping works from Ukraine via Warsaw and Venice
Entities
Artists
- Monika Fabijanska
- Susan Snodgrass
- Dana Kavelina
- Yevgenia Belorusets
- Alevtina Kakhidze
- Alena Grom
- Lesia Khomenko
- Anna Scherbyna
- Zhanna Kadyrova
- Olia Fedorova
- Kateryna Yermolaeva
- Vlada Ralko
- Alla Horska
- Ivan Svitlychny
- Oksana Chepelyk
Institutions
- Fridman Gallery
- Eastern Connecticut State University
- Weselyan University
- The Art Gallery of Stanford in Washington
- Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts
- University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery
- Chicago Cultural Center
- North Dakota Museum of Art
- San Diego State University Art Gallery
- Voloshyn Gallery
- Kmytiv Museum
- Vostok SOS
- Ukrainian Museum in New York
- Artist’s Union of the Ukrainian SSR
- BLOK
- Secondary Archive
- Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation
- ARTMargins Online
Locations
- New York
- United States
- Willimantic
- Connecticut
- Middletown
- Washington, DC
- Tallahassee
- Florida
- Winnipeg
- Manitoba
- Canada
- Chicago
- Illinois
- Grand Forks
- North Dakota
- San Diego
- California
- Ukraine
- Kyiv
- Donbas
- Donetsk People’s Republic
- Kharkiv
- Lviv
- Poland
- Warsaw
- Venice
- Italy
- Mariupol
- Bucha
- Iran
- Afghanistan
- Eastern Europe
- Soviet Union
Sources
- ARTMargins —
- ARTMargins —