At the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Yevgenia Belorusets, Nikita Kadan, and Lesia Khomenko answer an age-old question: what is art to do in the face of war? (the culmination of Yevgenia Belorusets's war diary, alongside monumental work by Nikita Kadan, and Lesia Khomenko).
When, in February 2022, we began releasing The War Diary of Yevgenia Belorusets as a daily newsletter, the need seemed simple: tell the news in Ukraine from a different vantage. The field of war was one of golden grain beneath an electric blue sky—a potent symbol, but painted in broad strokes. From Yevgenia's vantage, one sees the details: what it feels like to live in Kyiv and interact with the strangers who suddenly become your "countrymen;" the struggle to make sense of a good mood on a spring day; the instinctive aversion to being suddenly in the category of "civilians."
The diary had an immediate impact worldwide: translated by an anonymous collective of writers on Weibo; read live by Margaret Atwood; used as a slogan for anti-war protests in Berlin; and adapted for an episode of This American Life on NPR.
Yevgenia was asked to present the diary at the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of the exhibition "This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom." In partnership with the Office of the President of Ukraine, the exhibition brings Yevgenia's writing alongside the monumental and emotional art of Nikita Kadan and Lesia Khomenko—all of whom continue to work in wartime Ukraine.
In the Face of War is its catalog, containing the diary to date and contextualizing the work of these three young artists in the tradition of Ukrainian culture. It bears witness to the origins of the conflict on a human scale—concerned not with armies or troops, but civilian life: making visible the invisible and believable the unbelievable.
What unites Lesia, Nikita, and Yevgenia is that, in the face of war, they preserve its unintelligibility. They testify to the possibility that art can disrupt the military machinery and its narrative path. Like the invocation to "close the skies," the book is a call to the powers at large in defense of freedom, as an act of international empathy.
Published on the occasion of the 2022 Venice Biennale exhibition "This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom."
