‘Decolonization’ of Ukrainian art, one message at a time

Hiding for days in the basement of a kindergarten in Bucha, the suburb of Kiev that became that synonymous with Russian war crimesOksana Semenik had time to think.

Outside, Russian troops raged through the city, killing civilians who ventured onto the street. Knowing she might not make it, Ms. Semenik, an art historian, reflected on the Ukrainian artworks she had long wanted to write about — and which were now in danger of disappearing.

That time she spent in Bucha dated back to the early days of the full-scale invasion of Russia, but even then, two years ago, she had already seen reports of destroyed museums. Precious folk paintings by her favorite artist, Maria Primachenko, had gone up in flames. Moscow, she realized, waged a war against Ukrainian culture.

‘They destroy works of art. They destroy museums. They are destroying the architecture,” Ms. Semenik recalled as she thought in the basement. She promised that if she escaped from Bucha, she would not allow Ukrainian art to fall into oblivion. “It was like, ‘There’s a war. You can die at any moment. You shouldn’t put off all this research any longer.’”

Since then, Ms. Semenik, 26, has worked to fulfill that vow.

After fleeing Bucha on foot, she began “Ukrainian art history”, an English-language account on the social platform X, where she has been posting daily for the past 21 months about the lives and works of long-overlooked Ukrainian artists. Her posts, which often have more than 100,000 views, have become an important source for learning about Ukrainian art.

But perhaps an even more important achievement has been her work to push world-class museums to reconsider their classifications.

Using her online popularity to open doors, Ms. Semenik has lobbied them to reclassify art long considered Russian — because it dates from the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union — as Ukrainian.

She calls her efforts “decolonizing Ukrainian art.”

Thanks to her and other activists, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art have done just that many works of art and artists relabeledoverhauling decades of practice that critics say aligned Ukrainian culture with that of its former Russian ruler.

As Russia tries to erase Ukrainian identity, with art as the main targetMs Semenik’s work has been crucial in raising awareness of the country’s cultural heritage at a critical time, art world figures say. The Kremlin’s claim that the Ukrainian nation is a fiction.

“Russia says, ‘Hey, show us your culture. You don’t have one. Ukraine is not a nation,” Ms. Semenik said in a recent interview. “That’s what I’m fighting against.”

Ms. Semenik, a reserved woman with dyed red hair, still remembers the day she first read about the Ukrainian roots of Kazimir Malevich, the Kiev-born painter and a major pioneer of abstract art. Malevich has long been described as Russian, but in his diaries he identified himself as Ukrainian.

“Really, is that true?” she recalled thinking about her discovery around 2016, which sparked her interest in Ukrainian art.

Ms. Semenik worked as a cultural journalist for several years before enrolling in a master’s degree in art at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2021. She completed her master’s thesis on the representation of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukrainian art. , last year.

When she launched her This included the avant-garde artist Oleksandra Eksterthe 19th century painter Illia Repin and of course Malevich.

Many shared a common story: they were born, lived or worked in Ukraine; and they had been oppressed, exiled or murdered by Russia. Yet the world had remembered them as Russians, because of Moscow’s long-standing efforts to include Ukrainian culture as Russian heritage.

Ms. Semenik wants to debunk these myths by “writing about Ukrainian artists who were ‘stolen’ by the Russians,” she says. wrote shortly after she launched her account.

Oleksandra Kovalchuk, deputy director of the Odesa Museum of Fine Arts, said Ms Semenik’s efforts were “very important to show that Ukraine has a long history” and to counter Moscow’s narrative that Ukraine has always been part of Russia refute. “Art is a testimony to that.”

But Ms. Semenik knew that this story had been spread for a long time and was deeply entrenched in art institutions. So when she was offered a fellowship at Rutgers University in the fall of 2022, she decided to spend part of it studying the collections of Western museums and identifying what she believed to be errors in the labeling of Ukrainian art.

She started at the Zimmerli Art Museum, which is part of Rutgers University and has the largest collection of Soviet nonconformist art in the world, works created outside the official state system and the preferred style of socialist realism. She spent weeks researching the artists’ birthplaces and workplaces.

“Oksana came in and saw work with the Russian label and she said, ‘They’re Ukrainian!’” recalls Maura Reilly, Zimmerli’s director. “So we were like, ‘Yes, please fix it for us!’ She has done an incredible job.”

Ms. Semenik then turned her sights to other museums. What she discovered shocked her.

The Museum of Modern Art. The Met. The Jewish Museum. According to each of them, there were dozens of mislabeled Ukrainian works of art reports she has compiled.

Ms Semenik sent emails to the museums urging them to correct the labels, attaching spreadsheets detailing the artists she said had been misdescribed. The museum’s responses were often non-binding and irritated her.

In an email to the Brooklyn Museum, she pointed out that a landscape painting by Repin, set in what is now Ukraine, “Winter scene, Russia.”

“It’s like having a painting set in India during British colonial rule and calling it ‘British Landscape,'” she said, anger evident in her voice.

Several museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, said in written comments that they were reviewing their labels, but that the task was complicated by the overlapping identities of some artists. For example, Malevich was born in Ukraine to Polish parents and lived in Russia for many years.

Ms. Semenik said she was “not trying to erase all other identities and simply call these artists Ukrainian,” but that an all-Russian label amounted to complicity in Russia’s appropriation of Ukrainian culture.

Ultimately, Ms. Semenik decided to publicly highlight the museums on social media. Her posts were shared widely online, in a kind of name-and-shame operation. Other Ukrainian activists also harassed Western museums to review their collections. It didn’t take long for Ms. Semenik to notice changes in the museums’ labels.

“I have great news,” she said wrote on X early last year, while sheltering in Kiev during a Russian airstrike: The Met had recognized Repin as Ukrainian.

The Brooklyn Museum dropped the label identifying him as Russian, and instead listed his birthplace as present-day Ukraine. Other institutions, such as the National Gallery in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, have also made changes.

“Without Oksana’s efforts it certainly could have taken longer,” said Ms. Kovalchuk, who helped push the Met to change their labels.

Ms. Semenik said she sometimes starts her art discussions with the question, “Why don’t you know any Ukrainian artists?”

“Maybe one day I won’t have to ask that question,” she said.