Growing up in a Russian-speaking region of independent Ukraine, I seldom reflected on the impact of Russian colonial policies on the culture of my country. Among my peers, speaking Ukrainian was unpopular and mostly associated with coming “from the village.” As a result of the USSR’s purging of Ukrainian churches and traditions, my friends from the Zaporizhzhia region of eastern Ukraine never attended and knew very little about the history of the Ukrainian church, were unfamiliar with the traditional ways of celebrating Christmas and Easter, and showed little enthusiasm for Ukrainian dance or songs. The stark difference between western and eastern Ukraine (the latter more heavily colonized by the Russian empire and the USSR) began to become apparent to me when I would visit my family in Lviv. Suddenly, I would hear the Ukrainian language everywhere, and everyone considered themselves to be Ukrainian Catholic.
My story is that of countless Ukrainians who have lived in the reality created by the colonial power without realizing how much of their pasts has been erased. Following Russia’s occupation of the Donbas region in 2014, a renaissance in Ukrainian traditions began. As an act of resistance, more and more of my peers switched to the Ukrainian language and took a new interest in their heritage. After the invasion of 2022, in turn, I joined the many other young Ukrainians who took it upon themselves to preserve the culture that had survived the purges of the Russian empire and the USSR.
This exhibition, then, is my tribute to my ancestors, who were persecuted simply for being Ukrainian. With blood and sweat, they worked to pass along their culture’s songs, traditions, religion, and language to their children. In these trying times of Russian encroachment upon Ukrainian lands and the erasure of our culture and memory, my act of resistance is to expose the deceitful tactics of Russia and the USSR and demonstrate how the history of ethnic minorities has been rewritten to suit the imperialist agenda. Decolonizing institutions affected by these outside empires is my way of continuing the efforts of my ancestors and letting Ukrainian voices be heard again.