Decolonization and Identity in Ukrainian Art: Insights from

The war changed the art world and changed the way we look at decolonization. Because culture is not only a carrier of positive impressions, but can also carry destructive values. We talked about this with Tetyana Filevska, the creative director of the Ukrainian Institute, a researcher of the Ukrainian avant-garde and the work of Kazimir Malevich. Watch the full version of the exclusive interview and read the short version on Intent about artists' identity, decolonization and appropriation of identities.

You wrote that criticizing everything Russian and praising everything Ukrainian is not decolonization. Where is the line drawn?

Decolonization is not only a theory, because it is often believed that it is a certain academic approach, a methodology that allows you to look at something. But in fact, decolonization originated and developed as an activism and emancipatory movement.

Its homeland is Latin America. Much of decolonization comes from Latin American countries that are getting rid of the influence of former imperial rulers and thus trying to throw off the burden of enslavement that colonization brings.

We understand that this movement is not limited to a local territory, decolonization today concerns the whole world, because one way or another in our history some countries were once empires, others were colonies. This is a movement that will never be limited to theory. Just like feminism.

The goal of decolonization is unattainable-I'll say right away, it's to get rid of these layers of violence that colonization brings. If we compare it to an individual person, we can say that the path to some kind of psychological ideal state is desirable but unattainable. You work through it, and then something else appears. It's the same here.

That is, these traces of imperial violence manifest themselves through generations. There is even a conditional arithmetic that decolonization should last as long as colonization lasted. That is, relatively speaking, if we believe that we were colonized by Russia for 300 years, then do the math.

From the moment we started decolonizing-I'm not talking about the moment we became formally independent, but when we started consciously decolonizing-it takes about 300 years. If we started in 2022, then we have a lot of work ahead of us.

What are the criteria for artists' accession to the Ukrainian heritage? Let's take the example of Malevich, who lived in both Moscow and Kyiv. He cannot be defined as a Ukrainian or Russian avant-garde artist.

You are now talking about reappropriation. Something was stolen from us, something was disconnected from us and appropriated by others. And we are now trying to get it back. This is just one of the possible processes of revising our heritage. This is not the end of decolonization. In fact, decolonization begins when we stop talking about our colonizer all the time. That is, when we begin to look at ourselves holistically and not only in the context of Russia, then our process of decolonization will probably really begin.

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Tetiana Filevska. Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

All the time, we are still repelled by Russia. This is a postcolonial condition. When we can't imagine ourselves without our enslaver, when we dissociate ourselves, abolish it, take something away from it. But Ukraine is not limited to Russian influences.

We can look at Ukraine holistically in the context of any other connections, such as ancient Greece. The colonies of the northern Black Sea region, the Greek colonies. Why don't we look at this aspect?

Or the Italian colonies of Crimea, or ties with Poland or Austria-Hungary. In other words, we need to look at it holistically, based on our needs and self-awareness. And not just constantly looking at the dichotomy of Russia and Ukraine.

It is, of course, important. It is important for us to see all aspects of this relationship, which are complex and hybrid. We can talk here about Ukraine's role, for example, in building the Russian empire. This is a very complex topic-the position of Ukrainians in the Russian Empire, then in the Soviet Union.

But this is not limited to the fact that Malevich is Ukrainian or Russian. Another issue is identity. Let's look at how identity is constructed in general. Can identity be, for example, monologic in the twentieth century?

For example, I took a DNA test, and I can say for sure that I am not 100% Ukrainian. At least in my ancestry, because I have Balkan, Baltic, Eastern European, even a little bit of Greek.

Similarly, people who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when mobility was very high, a period of scientific and technological progress, when means of transportation appeared: the train, the airplane. People can travel distances and are interested in them. The empire collapses, and people begin to explore other territories, seek education, and they move in search of this education. There is no need to talk about any mono-identity.

Of course, it is possible, if a person insists that this is the identity, but, again, this is a matter of choice. Let's talk about Georgiy Gongadze and his identity, about Serhiy Nigoyan. Identity is a complex thing that is constructed and consists of many components.

Going back to Malevich, we can say for sure that Ukraine and Ukrainian culture were very important to him. It shaped his views-he wrote about it. But he also belongs to Polish culture, and he also plays an important role in the history of Belarusian art, for example. He is undoubtedly a part of the Russian artistic process, and there is no escaping it. But we shouldn't shove Malevich into some narrow door that he doesn't fit into, because he was definitely not a man of mono-identity.

His views were universalist in nature. He dreamed of finding a universal language of art, like all avant-garde artists, they sought to overcome borders and to reach an understanding between everyone and everyone. Now we smile that these are all utopian ideas, that the local is decisive, that without the local there is no universal and global. But back then they had utopian ideas and they had the right to them.

It is wrong to limit Malevich. This is what the Russians do, they try to completely appropriate him and say that he was a great Russian artist.

In fact, Malevich was plural, like all of us, he had various identities, but the Ukrainian one played an important role. We need to recognize it, to reveal it, to explain how these Ukrainian ties shaped him, how they influenced him, how he influenced Ukrainian culture. At the same time, we should not fall into the imperial trap of replacing one mono-identity with another. Decolonization, to be honest, is about giving people the opportunity to choose their identity and giving them the right to have multiple identities.

The wave of interest in Ukraine and our culture has been changing throughout the full-scale invasion, how can you characterize it?

The wave of interest, which at the beginning of the full-scale invasion was unprecedented. Everybody suddenly woke up and realized that Ukraine exists, and they don't understand anything about Ukraine, they can't explain to themselves where the strength and resistance came from and why our country didn't fall in three days and still hasn't. The demand for understanding what is going on, what kind of people and country these are, has lasted for quite a long time, almost a year in fact. We saw the level of solidarity that came with it.

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Tetiana Filevska. Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

It seems to me that all institutions in Europe organized at least one event dedicated to Ukraine-it was a sign of good taste, and everyone felt obliged to do so. It was clear that interest could not be sustained at this level for very long. The fact that it lasted almost a year is a record. And it correlates with the level of brutality and cruelty of the Russians towards Ukraine.

But since 2023, we have seen this wave subside, interest diminish, and it is becoming more difficult for us to maintain it. Perhaps it is not necessary to maintain it at this level, but it was crucial for us to convert the momentary interest and desire for solidarity into systematic cooperation. For us, it is now the most important thing to ensure that the Ukrainian voice continues to be heard, that these conversations and partnerships continue, and that we do not disappear from the world map again.

This requires effort and systematic solutions. This is our homework. We, I mean Ukrainian society, experts, museum workers, curators, artists, who have to build these connections and work with them.

Metaphorically speaking, if until 2022 we were knocking on doors that were closed to us, we had to open them at least somehow to start a conversation. From 2022 on, we can say that the door is open, but it is up to us to walk through it and build a partnership.

Марія Литянська