Between Aesthetics and Imagination: The Ongoing Transformations of Ukrainian Art in the Times of the War

Abstract

The paper attempts to examine, under the conditions of the war against Russia, the highly relevant question of the relationship between the ongoing Ukrainian war-influenced nation-building process and the nation’s art practices. The latter are considered by the authors to be of utmost importance as both the reflection of the former and, at the same time, as something that can influence it, thus, possibly slightly changing or altering the overall shape that the Ukrainian nation, which is being born, will take. It is suggested that imagination plays a major role as something that allows one to go beyond liberalism’s utilitarian or deterministic understanding of a nation. Accordingly, an artist is called someone who can, at least hypothetically, overcome a double limitation — that of processes of globalization and standardization of art market products and, on the other hand, total conditioning by the past of the nation. The Ukrainian nation is considered as a project in the process of making, an important role in which could be played by the artist’s imagination, relatively less determined by tangible parameters and determinants. In accordance with this statement, numerous examples are provided of how artists of modern Ukraine interpret, in the languages of different styles and genres of art, the ongoing war and the changes caused by it in the collective imagination of the Ukrainian nation, the process of formation of which continues. Using the "world-system", according to I. Wallerstein, method of comparative epistemology, the authors of the article prove the possibility and the effectiveness of studying the cultural habitus of Ukraine from the standpoint of transcendental aesthetics.