By Olha Chepil | 2025-03-20

KYIV -- A new art exhibition in Kyiv features Ukrainian artists whose works raise themes of loss of home, mourning for native places and the role of art in resistance.

The art project is dedicated to the Day of Resistance to Occupation of Crimea that occurred February 26, 2014. On that day, Crimeans on the peninsula protested in support of unity with Ukraine and against Russian occupation.

The exhibit opened February 27 and closes May 30.

Eleven years later, the fight for the Ukrainian peninsula's identity and freedom continues.

About 20 artists from all over Ukraine, many of them from Crimea, exhibited their works to express resistance to the Russian invaders through their personal experiences.

"As long as Crimea is in our memory, as long as we pass on knowledge about it to our children, it will remain Ukrainian. Regardless of whose boot is currently trampling Crimean soil," Olena Kovalska, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, told visitors February 27.

'Shadow of Water'

The exhibition, dubbed "Shadow of Water," opened at the Office of the Crimea Platform in Kyiv.

"Water is a very straightforward image that is associated with Crimea," exhibition curator Khrystyna Burdym, explaining the exhibition's title, told Kontur.

"We're talking about resistance by people who are trying to preserve themselves, their culture, their history. They are forced to remain constantly in a kind of struggle that is like a shadow, always with them," she said.

The exhibition aims to give visitors an opportunity to learn more about Crimea, and to possibly discover new artists who work with the theme of memory and are Crimean Tatars or Ukrainians from Crimea, according to Burdym.

"This exhibition helps highlight this half-silence, this hidden resistance," she said.

The exhibition includes paintings, installations, digital art and performances. A special place is occupied by the works of Crimean Tatar artists, whose art allows them to make sense of the loss of their home and to continue cherishing their culture.

One artwork by Ukrainian artist Katya Buchatska is painted with silt brought from occupied Crimea.

"It is about the presence of Crimea here with us, in Kyiv, in these rooms," Olha Kuryshko, permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, told visitors.

Repression of Crimean Tatars

In 2014, when Russia seized Crimea, many Crimean Tatars who resisted the occupation landed in prison.

That persecution has continued since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Russian occupation administration in Crimea has illegally detained 220 individuals, including 133 Crimean Tatars, on fabricated charges such as terrorism, extremism and treason, the Ukrainian government said in an update March 13.

"If you look at the history of Crimea and the peoples of Crimea in the 20th and 21st centuries, I would say that the 30 years of Ukraine's independence were the happiest years in the fate of the indigenous peoples of Crimea," said Kuryshko.

After occupying Crimea in 2014, Russia resettled about one million of its own citizens there, according to Kyiv. Using intimidation and persecution, Russians have forced at least 100,000 Crimeans to abandon their homes over 11 years.

But even the harsh repression of pro-Ukrainian views is not stopping those who have continued to heroically resist all these years, say the exhibition's organizers.

"Art can heal emotional wounds by working on one's emotions and ... can try to remind us where we come from and who we are," said Vahur Soosaar, deputy head of mission at the Estonian embassy in Kyiv, at the opening of the exhibition.

"And so I think this special exhibition ... reminds us that Crimea belongs to Ukraine and that Ukraine belongs to Europe," he said.

Memory in art

The exhibition includes the works of artists from mainland Ukraine who also have experienced occupation and who reveal the shared nature of traumatic memory through their own experiences.

For example, young artist Nastya Shcherban made a bright tapestry from recycled textiles and found objects.

"I made refugia -- plots of land where plants survive climatic and historical conditions that are unfavorable for them," she told Kontur. "For me, these are like islands of local memory of our peoples and territories. When conditions become favorable again, they will bloom."

Shcherban is a native of Kherson province, which is partly occupied by Russian troops. She works with the theme of landscape and history in her region. Her vibrant work reminds exhibition visitors of home.

"It was important for me to choose this particular silhouette," said Shcherban of one of her works. "But I know that it reminds many people of the mountains of Crimea, and those from eastern Ukraine have said it looks like slag heaps. Everyone sees what he [or she] misses."

The basement of the exhibition has a separate space designated the "Laboratory of Dreams," where visitors can create an associative table about dreams or memories related to Crimea.

"Since 2022, nobody from present-day Ukraine has the opportunity to visit Crimea. But sleep is one of the ways to travel in our consciousness," Ukrainian artist and singer Stanislav Turina, a native of partly Russian-occupied Donetsk province, told Kontur.

The exhibition was created with the support of the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine, which the governments of the United States, Canada, Great Britain and several European countries finance.

The organizers hope that in the future the exhibition will become a driving force for international cultural diplomacy.

"This exhibition is not just an art project but another voice in the fight for Crimea," said Kuryshko. "Through art, we continue to talk about resistance, memory and the right of return."