[spectre] CFP: Modernism in Ukraine (London, 4-5 Oct 24)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Katia Denysova
Date: May 14, 2024
Subject: CFP: Modernism in Ukraine (London, 4-5 Oct 24)

The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Oct 4–05, 2024
Deadline: Jun 9, 2024

Call for Papers | International Conference | Modernism in Ukraine: Local 
Contexts, Intercultural Encounters, Transnational Exchanges.

The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (4–5 October 2024).

Coinciding with the final stop of the touring exhibition In the Eye of 
the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s at the Royal Academy of Arts 
in London (29 June – 13 October 2024), this international conference 
will bring together established and emerging scholars for a first-ever 
discussion dedicated exclusively to Ukraine’s visual culture of the late 
nineteenth and twentieth centuries to be held outside Ukraine.

For decades the modernist art production of Ukraine has been viewed 
through the imperialist lens of the so-called ‘Russian avant-garde’, 
with scholarship dedicated specifically to the local Ukrainian context 
remaining marginal and mostly a purview of home-produced historiography. 
The Russian Federation’s brutal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of 
Ukraine in February 2022 has finally prompted a reassessment of the 
existing art historical canon, posing uncomfortable questions regarding 
the complicity of western academia and institutions in overlooking the 
Kremlin’s neo-imperialist pretensions. The current conference seeks to 
harness this unprecedented moment to redress historical injustices, 
invest in epistemic reparations and reclaim names, events and 
institutions for Ukraine’s cultural space. At the same time, by 
recognising and celebrating the country’s multicultural dimension and 
pluralism of its artistic practices, the presented discussions will go 
beyond the established national paradigm to investigate cultural 
transfers and intercultural exchanges.

The conference seeks to address the following questions: How did artists 
engage with indigenous pictorial traditions to construct Ukraine’s 
modern cultural identity? How did this engagement evolve under the 
changing political and ideological regimes? What intercultural and 
transnational encounters had informed the development of modern art in 
Ukraine? What is the legacy of Ukraine’s artistic modernism and what 
vision of the future can it offer?

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or presentations that address 
the abovementioned questions and/or the conference themes more broadly. 
Proposals can be dedicated to visual arts in a variety of media, roughly 
spanning the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth 
century, as well as the practice of contemporary artists working with 
the legacy of Ukraine’s artistic modernism.

Proposal submissions

Please submit the following materials, along with the full name and 
contact email address of the participant and information about any 
access requirements:

A proposal of up to 500 words for a 20-minute paper, or an alternative 
presentation
An academic CV of no more than 2 sheets of A4 or a 200-word biography
To: modernisminukraine at gmail.com

By: 11 pm (23:00) BST on Sunday 9 June 2024
Selected participants will be contacted by the end of June 2024

Funding/Access statement

We welcome the participation of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, 
and independent scholars, from all backgrounds and will do our best to 
ensure that the event is accessible to all attendees.

The event will be held in London with on-site participation of all 
speakers, wherever possible. The conference organisers will aim to cover 
travel expenses and accommodation of the invited speakers, especially 
those in need of financial assistance and without institutional funding.

Co-organised by Katia Denysova (University of Tübingen) and Maria 
Mileeva (The Courtauld Institute of Art)


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Modernism in Ukraine (London, 4-5 Oct 24). In: ArtHist.net, May 14, 
2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/41844>.