Snapshot Dialogue: Svitlana Biedarieva (Mexico City) and Lesia Khomenko (Kyiv)
As part of its 25th Anniversary Celebration, ARTMargins Online hosts a series of short dialogues between critics and curators from Eastern Europe and one or several artists. With this series of conversations, we want to shed light on the challenging political and economic conditions under which artists and other producers of culture in the region operate today, yet we also aim to highlight the amazing vibrancy, resilience, and resourcefulness of its art scenes.
In this conversation, Ukrainian critic and art historian Svitlana Biedarieva and artist Lesia Khomenko address the development of Ukrainian art after the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Their focus is on the ways that the military aggression and its broader impact on Ukrainian society are being recorded and interpreted in and through art, in particular in the medium of painting. Their discussion puts the spotlight on artists’ resourceful responses to violence and the need for resistance in a time of war.
Lesia Khomenko
Lesia Khomenko is a Ukrainian artist, co-founder, and member of the Ukrainian R.E.P. group (since 2004) and the curatorial group Hudrada (since 2008). She was shortlisted for the PinchukArtPrize (2009, 2011, and 2013), the Future Generations Art Prize (2012), and the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award (2012 and 2016). She lives and works in New York. Her works have been featured in several solo and group exhibitions, including at the Ukrainian Museum in New York, the Albertinum in Dresden, a parallel event of the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the European Parliament, the Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany), and the Freedman Gallery in New York. Khomenko’s works have been covered and reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Art Newspaper, and Frieze magazine.
