The event consists of performative monologues by three prominent Ukrainian women artists, each of whom has achieved significant success in her field: writing, poetry, philosophy, curating, artistic practice and activism, with interventions from Oksana Briukhovetska and Anna Scherbyna. Their presentations are an attempt to look at the long history of Ukrainian women’s resistance through specific female figures and projects in art and literature, such as the writer Lesya Ukrainka, who was crucial in the formation of the Ukrainian national myth, the artist Kateryna Bilokour and her “silent revolt” in the 1950s and the painter Alla Horska’s more open resistance in the 1960s, to art exhibitions and artworks that reflect the process of women’s emancipation after Ukraine’s independence in 1991 and during the two most recent Ukrainian Revolutions. The event’s title, Persona and Her Shadow, also refers to the work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung, and offers an attempt to look beyond the usual archetype of the Ukrainian woman as a warrior or mother of the land. What’s in the shadow of the Ukrainian woman? Trauma, denial of her sexuality, or over-sexualized behaviour? Victimhood, weakness, and lack of subjectivity? An aggressive monster or a witch that finally tries to appropriate the stereotype of her madness and deviance in order to take control of her own representation? These three talks will also shed light on questions such as: Why did the struggle for women’s emancipation begin much later in Ukraine than in Western Europe and the USA? What was the specificity of gender politics in the Soviet Union? How women and their bodies are symbolically intertwined with the Ukrainian land and the colonial politics of the invaders? And what happens to the body and voice of the Ukrainian woman in the context of today’s war, when it seems that the whole world is ready to listen to her while observing her physical annihilation, such as the recent murder of the Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina by a Russian missile during her tour of the frontline zone?

Practical information

Friday, November 24, 2023

Villa Vassilieff
21, avenue du Maine
75015 Paris