At This Moment in My Life: Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Wartime

In modern Ukrainian art, the work of women artists occupies a prominent, if not leading, place.

Bringing eight artists together in Karlsruhe is thanks to the city of Karlsruhe, the Baden-Württemberg Innovation Fund and SV SparkassenVersicherung, which made the exhibition “At this moment of my life” possible.

Since 2014 (the beginning of the war), the female voice has been particularly prominent against the background of traditionally male militaristic rhetoric.

Today, Ukrainian artists use different media that require both long-term work and “quick response” (e.g., drawings or watercolors). Her works are characterized by expression, emotionality, commitment, and determination. The themes they address can be both specifically feminine (motherhood, physicality, women's vulnerability in times of war) and universal, relating to shared experiences of the war apocalypse, the breaking of family ties, the critical rethinking of memory and trauma. The works also testify to the artists' involvement in the modern artistic process, with its characteristic international language and current trends.

— Oksana Barshynova, art critic, curator, deputy director of the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.