Curator of Winnipeg's Ukrainian Cultural Centre Talks About the Necessity of Art During War

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Curator of Winnipeg's Ukrainian Cultural Centre Talks About the Necessity of Art During War

 

In this episode of U-Multicultural's  "Community Hour", Alexandra Shkandrij, a curator of the exhibits in the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre Oseredok, speaks to U-Multicultural reporter about the importance of art during the war in showing and reminding the world and Ukrainians, themselves, of the distinctive Ukrainian culture. She talks about the changes Ukrainian art has undergone since the beginning of the war, and the new meaning and  importance it has acquired? 

A very successful immersive art event at Oseredok, she explained, gives an insight into the effect of war, itself, on the Ukrainian people right now. The works were made by artists in Kyiv and Odessa who were dealing with challenges such as power outages, and needing to come home from the front to complete their works. 

Keep watching the interview until the end to find out what changes has Ukrainian art undergone since the beginning of the full-scale war and what new meaning has it acquired?

Shkandrij quotes Winston Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister during the Second World War' who said, “If we don’t save culture, what are we fighting for?”

Alexandra is sure that art and culture are incredibly important, because they are uniting Ukrainians from all over the world. Also, art and culture is showing Ukrainian culture to the broader world. 

The main mission Ukrainian artists have now is to work on cultural diplomacy and this goes back to really highlighting that Ukrainians are their own people with their own identity, she explains. They are using their work to speak people, who might not understand the conflict but they might understand the world of art, of creativity and of just being a person.

The artists that we have today, who continue to make artwork, who continue to build relationships internationally, continue to express themselves and share their experience to the world. They are working as cultural diplomats. They are people who are able to do so much through social media, whether in visual art or other art forms, or through more academic spheres. What they are doing is contributing invaluably to a war effort as individuals when not on the front.

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Video Upload Date: January 24, 2023

U Multicultural is the ethnocultural media channel established with the objective of serving the diverse communities and contributing to the dynamic multicultural identity of Manitoba and Canada by offering accessible multi-ethnic television and radio services that offer information programming and other high-quality programming focused on ethnocultural communities of Canada.

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