Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

Authors analyze the topic of Ukrainian landscapes, wounded during the Russian full-scale invasion, in Ukrainian Art. The three artistic projects (Buchatska, Zviagintseva, Kokhan) reveal the tendencies of Artistic reflections on the landscape, which in context of existential danger feels like a body.

Paper long abstract

The theme of wounded landscape has gained prominence in Ukrainian art during the Russian full-scale invasion period (since February 2022). The curators of the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform analyze three artistic projects related to their curatorial practice. Katya Buchatska’s “This World is Recording” (2022) reflects a way to heal the wounded landscape by planting a tree in every shell crater. She imagines an orchard that we plant despite being aware that we can lose it. Anna Zviagintseva’s “Ground Shadows” (2023) reflects on the history of Babyn Yar’s landscape, wounded during the World War II and the Russo-Ukrainian War. In 1941, the ravine witnessed one of the most horrendous acts of the Holocaust in Ukraine. In 2022, a Russian missile killed pedestrians in Babyn Yar and maimed the trees. The artist thus tackles the theme of the vulnerability of all living things before the aggression and creates the imagery of interflowing anthropomorphic and plant forms in a situation of mortal danger. “In memoriam of us all” (2025) is Vitaliy Kokhan’s project that deals with the urban wounded landscape. It is a reflection on the wartime life in Saltivka—Kharkiv’s major bedroom community, heavily damaged by Russian aggression. The artist proposed to document the city’s experience under Russian attacks on the walls of a damaged school. These projects represent tendencies of the themes that Ukrainian art processes in the context of experiencing existential danger, when the sense of one’s own body gets extrapolated to the country’s entire territory.