In Miami, a Ukrainian art show inadvertently becomes topical

The gallerist husbands Julia and Max Voloshyn planned to return to Kiev last week to open a new show in their space. But when commercial air traffic stopped when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, their stay in Miami — and the duration of their pop-up exhibition there — was extended.

The show, entitled ‘The Memory on Her Face’, showcases socially charged work by five Ukrainian artists. After arriving in Miami in November to run booths at two of the satellite art fairs held concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach — NADA and Untitled Art — the Voloshyns contracted Covid, delaying their return for a month. In mid-January, when several prominent Ukrainian art collectors came to Miami in February, they staged this impromptu show in a small warehouse in the Allapattah neighborhood, curated by Untitled’s Omar Lopez-Chahoud.

“It is a documentation of what has happened in Ukraine in recent years,” explains Julia Voloshyn by phone from the rental house in Miami, where she, her husband and their small child reside.

One of Kadan’s pieces includes a silkscreen photo of a building in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which has been partially turned to rubble after Russian forces invaded the area in 2014 and continue to support separatists there. The silkscreen is loosely attached to a metal shield, so “when the sky moves it, it captures the fragility of our country and of our lives,” Voloshyn continued. “Now we see the same in Kiev.”

Khomenko’s portraits show ordinary working-class people ravaged by social forces, their bodies stretching against the confines of the canvases.

A large painting by Sai, from his ‘Bombed’ series, at first glance appears to be just a geographical abstraction. But it includes a recent satellite image of battle-ravaged areas of the Donbas, overlaid on one of Sai’s earlier paintings on aluminum, then attacked with a metal grinder to simulate the craters left behind.

Yet Voloshyn’s mind remained focused on her gallery in Kiev. It was used as an air raid shelter during World War II when the German army laid siege to the city, it is located under a seven-storey block of flats. The Voloshyns had transformed it into a chic space, complete with wooden floors and tasteful lighting. Now it was a bomb shelter again, and Voloshyn had urged the artists of her gallery to take refuge there.

On Saturday night, Kadan was locked in the gallery in Kiev with a small group, preparing for the city-ordered weekend-long curfew. His initial reaction to Thursday’s Russian invasion had been stoic. “I stayed in my apartment and watched old Ingmar Bergman movies,” he joked about Zoom. By Friday night, the explosions in the neighborhood had grown too loud to ignore, and he had moved into the gallery.

“I have so many historical images in my head that I keep thinking about: Sarajevo in the 90s, Leningrad during World War II,” he said. “Of course, now it will be different. War is always contemporary, always different. But it’s also always bloody. There’s already enough blood.” He fixed himself on the small children holed up in adjacent underground bunkers. “Every time we smoke a cigarette, we see this empty pram,” he added grimly.

For Kadan, the role of an artist in this situation was clear: “To be witnesses.” But he also knew that, as Russian troops invaded Kiev, many artists traded their pens and brushes for bottles to create Molotov cocktails. “Emotionally I am ready. But technically, to be honest, I’m not,” he explained. “I have dealt with the reality of war in my art, but I have never held a real weapon in my hands. Maybe I’ll throw an empty champagne bottle at the tanks. I do not know.”

Khomenko and her family had also initially sought shelter in the Voloshyn Gallery. An activist during the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, she was delighted to see both the military and civilians united to resist the current invasion. But Kadan had begged Khomenko to think of her 11-year-old daughter and move to safer territory in the west.

There was an hour of tense discussion – and heated argument with Khomenko’s grandmother, who had witnessed the German attack on Kiev in 1941 and absolutely refused to leave the city now. Finally on Friday, before the Ukrainian army began to defensively blow up the city’s bridges, Khomenko, her daughter, husband, sister and mother, the mother’s cat and Khomenko’s dog, all crammed into her outdated Czech-built Skoda and rushed himself to a friend’s house. in the small western town of Ivano-Frankivsk.

“I have been driving for more than 24 hours,” a visibly tired Khomenko said via Zoom on Saturday evening. To avoid fighting, “we tried to stay off the main roads between villages, but those roads are really bad, so it’s stressful. It’s completely dark, very rough.”

Left behind were the series of expansive canvases she’d been working on for the past five years — intended to be unveiled in June at a Kiev historical museum. She was originally inspired by her grandfather’s sketches of the German invasion of 1941: “I wanted to compare the real war experience with the socialist-realist propaganda of the period.” Except that the equation had suddenly received an all-too-real update. Her mind was already racing as she mused aloud about Russia’s recent digital propaganda and the war scenes she’d just seen — and felt firsthand.

“Painting has its own language with a deep tradition. I want to work with that tradition, mix socialist realism with internet images, put it together and construct a new image,” she continued before catching herself. She paused and shook her head, “It’s so crazy. We lived so normally, and then we became flesh and just tried to escape.”

The memory on her face

Through March 28 at 676 NW 23rd St. in Miami. To schedule a free visit, email: [email protected].