Book Launch “Images and Objects of Russia’s War against Ukraine” (Natasha Klimenko, Miglė Bareikytė, Viktoriya Sereda, eds.) – Discussion, Screening, and Performance organized by Lesia Kulchynska | 30 January 2026, 16:00–19:00, Vox-Pop.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has destroyed lives, communities, and cities. From the beginning of this stage of the war, images of this destruction spread across various media platforms. Paintings, photographs, drone footage, TikTok videos, and Instagram posts have shaped how the war is experienced, represented, and archived. In this multidisciplinary volume, artists, scholars, and writers explore how art, media, infrastructures, and material culture respond to and contest the Russia-Ukraine War.

The book launch will feature a presentation of the volume, followed by a conversation with the editors (Miglė Bareikytė, Natasha Klimenko, and Viktoriya Sereda) and two of the book’s authors (Mykola Homanyuk and Lesia Kulchynska) on how different cultural and spatial forms—including social media, visual art, billboards, and infrastructure—interpret and shape the war and the narratives that envelop it.

Alongside the discussion, the event will include a screening of an experimental video essay directed by Bareikytė and Klimenko and made in collaboration with five contributors to the volume. The video essay functions as an extension of the book, allowing scholarly work to take on an alternate form, and presents the voices and materials of the authors in a visual and time-based medium. The event will be introduced by economist Oleksandra Moskalenko and moderated by media studies scholar Daniel de Zeeuw.

The book presentation will be followed by the reception and performance by the Ukrainian artist Borys Kashapov, Only for Men. In the performance, Kashapov reflects on his experience of displacement and nomadic existence caused by the war in his country by creating his paintings not on the canvas that should be exhibited, transported,  and stored, but directly on the nails of the people he meets, turning them into live nomadic art institutions that tour the nail exhibition wherever they go, discussing it with their friends or random interlocutors.

The title refers to the practices of gender exclusion and codification inherent to patriarchal society, dramatized by war.  With the discrimination stated by the title, the artist invites everyone who doesn’t consider themselves a man to ignore it, just like any other discriminatory prohibition.

Organised by

Lesia Kulchynska