academia will talk about decolonization<\/p>\n
it will talk about it all the time<\/p>\n
but with the exception of the few<\/p>\n
it will not talk about your father, brothers, sisters, friends<\/p>\n
those in cold trenches, decolonizing through de-occupation<\/p>\n
that will not be epistemic enough to be discussed<\/p>\n
Darya Tsymbaliuk, DO NOT DESPAIR. a letter to a scholar whose homeland will be attacked by Russia next<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I am writing this in March 2024, two years after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and a year and a half after I was invited to speak as part of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which this year opens in mid-April. Right now, Andrii Dostliev and I are finishing a project which was commissioned for it, \u2018Comfort Work\u2019.<\/p>\n Despite the horrors of the war, 2022 also brought hope: hope that, by making a consolidated effort and partnering with like minded allies Ukrainian cultural professionals might be able to shift, shed light on and ultimately undermine the privilege and centrality of Russian culture.<\/p>\n As my colleagues and I have written in previous articles, the beginning of the war in February 2022 marked a turning point as Ukraine shifted from a post-colonial state to a decolonial one. Conversations in Venice were full of optimistic expectations of change, and many of the participants, I think, envisioned themselves as an active part of it.<\/p>\n I remember the moment at the beginning of the war when I realized that the reason why Ukrainian cultural representation in the world is so weak \u2013 here and elsewhere I use the word \u2018Ukrainian\u2019 in its civic and political, not ethnic dimension \u2013 is above all the lack of available platforms for public expression. The reality, however, turned out to be far more complex.<\/p>\n Andrii Dostliev, \u2018Education fails in mysterious ways\u2019, riso-type posters, 2023. Image courtesy of artist<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman write in their book The Empire of Trauma<\/em>, the earthquake which levelled several Armenian cities in 1988, leaving tens of thousands dead and over a hundred thousand wounded, also became a politically significant event because \u2018in practical terms, it gave the West its first opportunity to enter this region.\u2019 Fassin and Rechtman attribute this to the fact that the Soviet world \u2018had hitherto been firmly closed to all outside interference.\u2019 However, over thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, residents of territories that were once forced to be part of it have repeatedly found that the attention of the West is extremely selective and not necessarily dependent on how open a country\u2019s region is. A natural disaster or a war at home may indeed draw attention to the affected region for a short time \u2013 with global media outlets covering events as if they\u2019ve just discovered your part of the world on the map. In 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and then when the full-scale invasion began eight years later, the so-called collective West noticed Ukraine as if for the first time, somewhat surprised to realize that between Berlin (or, if you are very lucky, Warsaw) and Moscow lies not an endless and nameless wilderness but a territory with living people who have their own language and culture but whose homes are being destroyed as I write.<\/p>\n Andrii Dostliev, \u2018Dead Pixels\u2019, silkscreen poster, 2022. Image courtesy of artist<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The consequence of your country being a part of traumatic geography on the Western mental map is a very specific form of attention and recognition that your society receives. The Oscar awarded to the film 20 Days in Mariupol<\/em> by Mstyslav Chernov is a vivid example: it\u2019s hard to imagine a Western director starting their speech with the words \u2018I wish this film had never been made.\u2019<\/p>\n The wave of interest in Ukrainian culture provoked by the full-scale invasion has undoubtedly led to the creation of new public platforms and opportunities to manifest Ukraine\u2019s cultural presence. However, this attention has been given on rather rigid terms. It wasn\u2019t because of a sudden realization that the wide range of cultural forms that exist within Ukraine are no less valuable than those of Russia or the West. This scrutiny comes with an embedded hierarchy and is a form of temporary solidarity with a community that is being physically destroyed by a stronger force. The cultural value of the product that was given public exposure \u2013 particularly at the beginning of the full-scale invasion \u2013 was therefore a secondary concern. The principal one was that its creators were from Ukraine and could be provided with cultural humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n As a result, we witnessed a surge in Ukraine-related events abroad which were often of poor artistic quality. They were organized by institutions that wanted to help but often lacked both the expertise to create a quality product and the ability to realize their shortfall. Exhibitions dedicated to Ukraine featured artists whose Ukrainian origin was the only thing they had in common, missing any clear curatorial message.<\/p>\n The flooding of these events into the cultural space blurred the boundaries between emergency residencies or exhibitions organized as a gesture of solidarity and professional, quality-based Ukrainian projects. Moreover, the temporary hype led cultural workers, some of whom had built their entire careers abroad, to be perceived as mere Ukrainian bodies, regardless of their professional level. They were seen as bearers of trauma and their activities framed exclusively in identity-based categories.<\/p>\n The apparent demand for quality Ukrainian art which \u2018can do more than speak of war and act as a perpetual reminder of the urgency of the situation\u2019 as opposed to art which fails to \u2018override fixed and binary categories of identity\u2019 excludes several very important things. Firstly, Ukrainian art which is expected to be \u2018more than national\u2019 and moves beyond ethnic dimension is framed in artificial categories of national identity primarily by critics\u2019 descriptions, curators\u2019 work, and the audience\u2019s perception, which is a symptom of looking at Ukraine through the lens of colonial Russia (or, as in the case of Poland, conditioned by its own colonial past too). It is impossible to make \u2018post-national\u2019 art if those who look at it and those who describe it still perceive the work in terms of the author\u2019s nationality and see its \u2018Ukrainianness\u2019 as its main characteristic.<\/p>\n Another problem with providing public platforms to represent Ukrainian culture in the West is that such platforms often create a \u2018ghetto\u2019 of sorts, where only Ukrainians (refugees or diaspora) and a few like-minded allies attend events dedicated to Ukraine. This format maintains the current colonial hierarchy: it signifies solidarity but lacks any emancipatory potential because it does not involve integration with a broader audience beyond the narrow pool of Ukrainian sympathizers, nor does it provide the possibility of real influence. The target audience for decolonial change simply don\u2019t come, and a Ukrainian bubble therefore arises, where a space is formally provided for the representation of the \u2018emotional and traumatized Ukrainian voice\u2019, but that voice is not heard.<\/p>\n To the west of the Oder river, this smattering of charitable deeds was also a means of redemption: it\u2019s easier to provide Ukrainian artists with space in an institution for a one-day event between planned exhibitions than to contemplate how decades, even centuries of focus on the culture of a neighbouring colonizer and the adoption of its gaze as default contributed to the normalization of Russia\u2019s wars and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The proliferation of Ukraine-related decolonial events paradoxically serves as a substitute for real decolonial (read: structural) changes.<\/p>\n Andrii Dostliev, from \u2018It\u2019s decolonial\u2018 series, 2023. Images courtesy of artist<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I have repeatedly found myself in situations where breaking the pattern of creating a \u2018Ukrainian ghetto\u2019 and the attendance of non-Ukrainians at Ukrainian events became a source of anxiety for Western hosts: \u2018Who are these people in the audience? Do you know them? Are they your friends?\u2019<\/p>\n Now, two years on, it can be argued that what we initially perceived as a shift towards decolonization was just a temporary Ukrainian quota with little potential for structural change. On the contrary, institutions \u2013 both in culture and academia \u2013 have mobilized existing resources to preserve their status quo, preparing to contest even the potential threat to their position of privilege.<\/p>\n Various strategies of appropriating the decolonial discourse and instrumentalizing it to preserve the existing colonial hierarchy can be cited here as examples. Marking the term \u2018Russian culture\u2019 as problematic has led many cultural figures who had built their professional identity in affiliation with it to unsubscribe from the symbolic space. Suddenly, everyone stopped being Russian, but continued to defend their professional right to speak on behalf of the entire region of the former Russian colonies. People who left Russia after 2022, having already built their careers there, suddenly stopped using the word \u2018Russia\u2019 in their bios and\/or have discovered some relatives \u2013 always female: grandmothers or aunts, for some reason \u2013 in Ukraine or other former colonies, where they spent a lot of time as children, enjoying tasty national food and the pleasant sounds of a somewhat funny local language. [img. 5]<\/strong> Symbolically leaving the set of those targeted by the call to \u2018decolonize Russian culture\u2019, all these individuals began to consider themselves part of a community that will be now in charge of \u2018decolonisation\u2019 \u2013 or rather, the preservation of the existing colonial hierarchy, but this time in a decolonial wrapper. Western institutions supported this relabelling, readily providing a space for self-proclaimed ex-Russians to represent the entirety of a region which was once Russia\u2019s empire.<\/p>\n Photos from the performance \u2018Grandma from Zhytomyr\u2019, Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin, 2024. Image courtesy of artist<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The sudden search in one\u2019s family ancestry for more oppressed heritage has nothing to do with actual decolonization through addressing colonial erasure or bringing back plurality. It is, in fact, the opposite of seeking decolonial justice: as long as the identity of a Russian curator \u2013 or any other public figure \u2013 provides privileged access to institutional resources, everyone is satisfied. Another problematic aspect of such shifts in identity is the understanding of one\u2019s connection to the Ukrainian context in terms of \u2018primitive ultranationalism\u2019 \u2013 literally through blood and soil, which ignores the civic, social and political dimensions. From this perspective, belonging to a certain cultural community is something one is born into; it has nothing to do with conscious choice or the performative, everyday component of that culture, which is itself reduced to ethnic kitsch. We therefore have a peculiar paradox: the reappropriation of the colonized identity and the simultaneous preservation of the colonial gaze on this identity. (It is worth mentioning that Western researchers traditionally attribute \u2018bad nationalism\u2019 \u2013 monoethnic, monocultural, aggressive towards anything that is not its constituent \u2013 to formerly colonized nations that gained statehood.)<\/p>\n What should we then do? If Ukraine wants to keep alive the discussion about decolonial approaches \u2013 and I hope it does \u2013 we should focus, first and foremost, on creating new horizontal connections with representatives of other former colonized communities which have similar experiences of oppression. It is with them that, in my opinion, the Ukrainian cultural community should primarily engage and unite.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This essay was first published in <\/i>Decolonising Art: Beyond the Obvious. Learn more about the publication here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1-1024x495.jpg\")
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