A War Like This

Curated by
Gregory Volk

In June 2024 I visited Ukraine for the first time, spending most of the month in Kyiv and Lviv, meeting daily (and sometimes nightly) with artists, curators, museum directors, writers, filmmakers, and others. At the time, Russia was constantly attacking both cities (and elsewhere too, of course) with Shahed drones and missiles, which continues. I was initially unnerved, more like terrified, by the eerie sound of air raid sirens and the emphatic announcements on my iPhone attack app to immediately seek shelter. For the first few days I obeyed, but over time I got used—somewhat—to these warnings and often ignored them, as do many Ukrainians who have been enduring Russian assaults and disruption for years.

Being in a country at war was a life-changing experience. So has been absorbing how Ukrainian artists are living, working and flourishing during the war, whether they are in the country or abroad, maintaining generosity, enthusiasm. and wry humor as they respond with talent and vision, resolve, vitality, acute critical thinking, passion, inventiveness, and profound civic and political engagement; their art constitutes potent resistance. They know what is at stake: their lives, country, culture, history, language and natural environment. They know that this horrible war is not just about territory. It is about imperialist Russia seeking yet again (as it’s been doing for centuries) to not just subjugate but violently eradicate independent, democratic Ukraine and decimate Ukrainian culture, no matter the lives lost, the destruction wrought. This includes how Russia routinely targets prominent cultural sites (museums, churches, publishing houses, libraries), also artists, writers, and other cultural figures. Ukrainian artists matter. The artists in this exhibition (as with their many forebears, many of whom were not only suppressed but imprisoned and executed by Russians) are adventurous, critically minded, free-spirited, truth-telling, courageous and, well, deeply Ukrainian. Therefore, they are a threat… to Russia. This has been the case for centuries and is the case now.

Ukraine was an ally of the US when I visited, a vibrant, still emerging democracy bravely withstanding Russia’s brutal, colonialist war. That ally status seems questionable now. One thing that is very clear—widely known in Ukraine, but often less known outside of the country, including in the US—is the staggering extent of Russian atrocities in temporarily occupied parts of Ukraine, including routine murder, torture, incarceration, rape, the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian children, and ecocide, as well as relentless war crimes elsewhere. As of this writing, just a few days ago, on Palm Sunday, Russia attacked the city of Sumy with Iskander ballistic missiles, killing 35 civilians and gravely wounding well more than a hundred. Ten days before, a Russian missile attack (“raining shrapnel,” according to a New York Times report) on a residential district and playground in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, killed 21, including nine children, and wounded dozens. Russia, helmed by the ruthless and murderous dictator Vladimir Putin for almost 25 years, is indeed a terrorist state. Ukraine, led by Zelenskyy since 2019, when he won the presidency in a free and fair election, is not.

The artists in A War Like This—all of whom have been profoundly impacted by the war in myriad ways, including their daily lives, conceptual concerns, art-making strategies, and even where they live—are clear-eyed about Russian horrors, as they unflinchingly and creatively address the war from diverse perspectives and in mediums spanning painting, sculpture, photography, video/film, and prints. Animated by outrage, their consequential art is also steeped in hopefulness, humanity, and a steadfast yearning for justice. They are indeed creative forces, also political and moral ones and I have learned much from them. They want, and convey in their innovative and engaging art, for the world to take note, for justice to be done, and for Ukraine to remain independent and free.

I want this too.

Gregory Volk