[spectre] CFP: Ukrainian Art History: Working Through Uncertainties (Paris, 4-5 Mar 27)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Oleksandra Osadcha
Date: Oct 19, 2026
Subject: CFP: Ukrainian Art History: Working Through Uncertainties 
(Paris, 4-5 Mar 27)

Institut national d’histoire, Paris, Mar 4–05, 2027
Deadline: Nov 8, 2026

Ukrainian art history has been shaped by successive waves of political 
disruption, which affected both the objects available for study and the 
infrastructures and institutions through which knowledge was produced. 
Taking the Ukrainian context as a starting point, this conference asks 
how art history can engage with fragmented archives, contested cultural 
memory, under-documented artistic practices, and forms of knowledge that 
exceed institutional frameworks.

Rather than proposing a unified narrative, the project develops plural 
methodological approaches for addressing uncertainty, rupture, and 
epistemic instability as constitutive conditions of art historical 
research. By treating these conditions of knowledge as objects of 
inquiry in their own right, the conference moves beyond canonical 
narratives toward a critical examination of the contexts that determine 
historical legibility. It thus seeks to examine the conditions under 
which certain artistic practices, artists, exhibitions, and cultural 
histories become visible and historically legible, while others remain 
marginalised, forgotten, censored, or excluded from institutional 
archives and dominant art-historical narratives. By addressing these 
gaps and complexities, the project opens an interdisciplinary dialogue 
between art history, visual culture studies, memory studies, decolonial 
theory, and media studies.

The conference therefore asks:

- What happens to art-historical knowledge when the archives, 
institutions, objects, and narratives on which it relies become 
unstable, displaced, or destroyed?
- How do political regimes, institutions, and infrastructures shape the 
discipline of art history in Ukraine and the categories through which 
art histories are written?
- What circumstances render certain artistic practices historically 
legible while others remain obscured?
- How are memories of the past shaped, contested, and reconfigured 
through artistic practices and historical narratives?
- How do images and visual practices shape the way violence is 
presented, concealed, legitimised, or contested?
- In what ways do cultural objects and knowledge persist outside 
institutional archives and dominant narratives?

These questions are intended to be addressed through concrete artistic, 
archival, institutional, and historiographical cases rooted in the 
Ukrainian context. The conference welcomes contributions that bring 
theoretical and methodological approaches into dialogue with specific 
artworks, artistic practices, exhibitions, archives, institutions, and 
other historically situated materials.

THEMES
The conference itself is structured around four thematic panels:

- Politics and Practices of Memory and Forgetting
This panel examines processes of erasure, omission, appropriation, and 
recontextualisation related to imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet 
legacies, as well as contemporary engagements with the past in Ukraine. 
It explores how political regimes reshape the meanings and uses of 
artworks, monuments, archives, and historical narratives, while also 
considering artistic practices that challenge official memory politics.

- Violence and Visuality
This panel explores violence in the Ukrainian context, not only as a 
subject of representation, but also as a condition embedded within 
visual regimes. It examines how images and visual practices shape the 
ways violence is seen, represented, concealed, and made intelligible, 
including through censorship, propaganda, and other forms of control 
over what can be shown. It also considers how images participate in the 
production of ideological imaginaries and structures of domination, as 
well as how artistic practices disrupt established modes of seeing 
through counter-images, alternative visualities, and strategies that 
question the spectacularisation and instrumentalisation of violence.

- Apocryphal Histories
This panel examines artistic practices and forms of knowledge that have 
persisted outside institutional archives and official narratives in 
Ukraine, including oral histories, ephemeral interventions, undocumented 
artworks, artist-run initiatives, and marginalised artistic figures 
preserved through memory and testimony. It mobilises methodologies from 
artistic research, oral history, counter-archival studies, and research 
into self-organised artistic communities. It asks how such practices and 
forms of knowledge can help reconstruct histories that remain absent 
from institutional archives and dominant narratives.

- Ruptures and Continuities of Art-Historical Writing
This panel investigates how successive political transformations have 
reshaped the institutions, methodologies, categories, and practices 
through which Ukrainian art history has been studied and written. It 
also traces continuities across periods often understood as radical 
historical breaks, asking how art history in Ukraine, both as a 
discipline and a profession, has responded to political transitions and 
historiographical instability.

APPLICATION
The conference invites contributions from researchers, scholars, visual 
artists, curators and cultural professionals at any stage of their 
careers, working across disciplines and approaches that critically 
engage with Ukrainian art history.

SUBMISSION
To apply, applicants must submit a single PDF containing:
- A paper proposal (max. 200 words), indicating the preferred panel
- A short bio (max. 100 words)
- Keywords

Papers must be presented in French or English.
Applications must be submitted to: methodologyseminar at gmail.com
Deadline: 8 November 2026
Selection results: mid-November 2026

TERMS OF PARTICIPATION
Travel, accommodation, and per diem expenses for selected participants 
will be fully covered.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
- Edit András (Institute of Art History, Budapest);
- Mathilde Arnoux (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris) ; - 
Marion Boudon-Machuel (Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris) ; - 
Iryna Klymenko (Research Centre Ukraine – Max Weber Foundation, Lviv) ; 
- Valerie Mavridorakis (Sorbonne Université, Paris) ; - Tristan Weddigen 
(Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome).

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
- Kateryna Filyuk (IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives); - 
Oksana Karpovets (Sorbonne Université);
- Lesia Kulchynska (University of Amsterdam);
- Oleksandra Osadcha (Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography).

PARTNERSHIP
The conference is organised by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art 
(INHA), Paris, in collaboration with Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck 
Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome, Research Centre Ukraine – Max Weber 
Foundation, Lviv, the Institut français, Paris, and the Ukrainian 
Institute in France, Paris.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

András, Edit. “What Does East-Central European Art History Want? 
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Theory, 2016.

Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, 
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Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. 
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Bernhardt, Katja, Robert Born, Mateusz Kapustka, Antje Kempe, Aleksandra 
Lipińska, and Beate Störtkuhl. “Des points aveugles en histoire de l’art 
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Biedarieva, Svitlana, ed. Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction 
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Chervonik, Olena. “Does Ukraine Have an Art History?” In Decolonising 
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Demchuk, Stefaniia, and Illia Levchenko, eds. Entangled Art Histories in 
Ukraine. London/New York: Routledge, 2025.

Kapustka, Mateusz, ed. Under Shelling: Art Historical Revisions in the 
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Lozhkina, Alisa. Permanent Revolution: Art in Ukraine, 20th to Early 
21st Century. Kyiv: ArtHuss, 2019.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. 
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and 
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Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of 
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Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Ukrainian Art History: Working Through Uncertainties (Paris, 4-5 
Mar 27). In: ArtHist.net, Oct 19, 2026. <https://arthist.net/archive/54687>.