Commemorative Practices During the War: Bohdan Mazur’s project Memory of Civilian Victims

Abstract

The article explores actual issues related to the memorial aspect of commemorating the fallen civilians of Ukraine as a result of russian aggression, focusing on the creative aspects of the commemorative issue in the space of urban architecture and forms of social communication aimed at creating such memorial zones as a part of the collective memory and commemorative policy of the state as a whole. The aim of the paper is to analyze creative practices and socio-cultural (institutional) interactions that strive to implement memorial cultural policy during the war. The subject field of the article is the practical implementation of the idea of the memorial architectural project In Memory of Civilian Victims by Bohdan Mazur, a famous Ukrainian sculptor. It is on the example of the implementation of B. Mazur’s memorial project that the author highlights contradictory approaches and views, problem areas of this project’s implementation: from the forms of memorialization of tragic events to the ways of communicating with authorities, opinion leaders, and professional experts on this issue in the context of wartime.