Ukrainian Art in the Context of the Liberation War

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between the ongoing Ukrainian nationbuilding process and the national art practices. In the former, 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 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 an ongoing project, in which the artist’s imagination could play an important role as it is relatively less determined by tangible parameters and factors. Thus, the article explores numerous examples 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, whose formation continues to be a relevant topic for the art world.