SONIAKH is announcing a platform relaunch.

Our team is beginning the new year with a programme Erasing & Recalling which will look at the phenomenon of memory in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine and East European decolonial studies. The project will involve a series of publications in different formats, including analytical texts, artistic research pieces, conversations, and curated artworks. 

Each of the programme’s publications will reflect on how memory, artistic practices and life experiences are transmitted, remembered, reconstructed and renewed, but also forgotten or erased in the context of Russian colonialism. We will ask how Ukrainian culture is influenced by the imperialist framework and how we as subjects consciously and unconsciously resist or reproduce colonial influences. All of this will be discussed through an analysis of the possibilities and limitations of archiving and musealisation, commemoration, witnessing, restoration, etc. The project will not only speak to today’s events but also the historical context and the genealogy of the phenomena.

Following our break, SONIAKH will now be developing a curatorial framework to examine possible sites of/for Ukrainian subjectivity in the broader context of post- and decolonial processes and to explore the repercussions of Russian colonialism on national and ethnic identities both in Ukraine and beyond. SONIAKH strives to shed light on personal histories, employing the formats of artistic research and conversations with critical, phenomenological and psychoanalytic stances, while also continuing to exhibit Ukrainian artworks in an online installation format. Consequently, SONIAKH’s transition from a media project to a dynamic curatorial platform is symbolised by the omission of the term ‘digest’ from our name.

ABOUT THE TEAM

In this new iteration, the platform is run independently by its curators Milena Khomchenko and Valeriia Buradzhyieva with the support of the Ukrainian NGO Cultural Geographies. 

The upcoming part of the project Erasing and Recalling was supported as part of the (re)connection UA 2023/24 programme, which is implemented by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) NGO and the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF) in partnership with UNESCO and funded through the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund.

The (re)connection UA 2023/24 aims at fostering the reconnection between artists and their audiences, supporting artists as champions for preserving Ukraine's cultural identity, introducing innovative strategies for memory studies, and strengthening resilience and adaptability among institutions, communities, and artists during the time of war.