Frontline art. Representing Donbas 2013-19

Svitlana Biedarieva is a Ukrainian artist, curator, and art researcher who lives and works in Mexico City. Her interests include the limits of art, ideological space, violence, and resistance. Svitlana has a PhD in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Together with Hanna Deikun, she curated ‘Front Line Art’, an exhibition on Ukraine’s six years of conflict, 2013-2019. As an artist, Svitlana Biedarieva held solo exhibitions ‘The Morphology of War’ at the National Center of Arts in Mexico City and the Erasto Cortes Museum in Puebla in 2017. She currently works on the book ‘Contemporary Art in Ukraine and the Baltic Countries: Political and Social Perspectives’, which will be published by ibidem Press (Stuttgart).

Anna Deikun is the curator of ‘At the Front Line’ project. She lives and works in Mexico. Hanna focuses on research and teaching of the political and intellectual history of the twentieth century. She studied at the Free University of Berlin and the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. Laureate of the Genaro Estrada Prize awarded by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the study of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the USSR. She teaches at the Institute of Higher Fashion Studies ‘Casa de Francia’ in Mexico.

Roman Minin is a graphic artist, photographer, author of objects, monuments and installations, and anthologist of miners’ lives in the heart of the coal-mining region of Donetsk. Minin was born in Dymytrov, in the Donetsk region. He graduated from the Kharkiv Art College and the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. In 2012, he was the director of the Urban Art Program of the Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives in Donetsk. Minin, a participant in international art projects and street-art festivals, actively uses methods of augmented reality in his works and considers himself the founder of the art movements Transmonumentalism and SMS-Art. He lives and works in Kharkiv.

Myroslav Shkandrij is Professor Emeritus of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. He has published works on the cultural and political history of Ukraine, the avant-garde, nationalism, Jewish-Ukrainian relations, Russian-Ukrainian relations and postcolonial theory, and has curated exhibitions at the Winnipeg Art Galleries, Hamilton Art Gallery, Ukrainian Museum in New York, and Oseredok (Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre) in Winnipeg.