Olga Volynska’s book Art against Artillery: Ukrainische Künstler im Krieg is a collection of 15 interviews with Ukrainian artists and cultural experts who have experienced war. Stories of loss and restoration, strength and faith are a multi-voiced portrait of contemporary Ukrainian art, facing enemy aggression.

The book raises the themes of cultural genocide and the destruction of cultural heritage, but at the same time testifies to the phenomenal flowering of art, which becomes a form of resistance, memory and healing. The examples of contemporaries collected on the pages of the publication help not only to preserve documentary evidence of the consequences of the full-scale Russian invasion, but also to more deeply feel the centuries-old struggle for Ukrainian identity. Numerous illustrations and color reproductions of works of art complement the publication.

Olga Volynska is a writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and human rights activist, winner of numerous journalistic awards, including the Honorable Profession, Novomedia Awards, and the Anti-Corruption Investigation Competition. For over ten years, she has been researching the topics of war, human rights, and resilience. Volynska is the author of five books, two of which were published in Europe after the start of the full-scale invasion, including Wie der Krieg uns verändert (“How War Changes Us,” 2023).

Participants of the discussion:

• Iryna Zhygulina – head and co-founder of the NGO “Chronicle of Indestructibility”, historian, art curator, researcher of the history of Christianity and the city-state of the Vatican;
• Oleksandr Knyga – director of the Kherson Music and Drama Theater named after M. Kulish;
• Diana Popfalushi – deputy director of the Austrian Cooperation Office in Lviv.
• Andriy Kotlyarchuk – photographer

The presentation of the publication Art against Artillery: Ukrainian Artists in War is a platform for discussing the role of culture in the struggle for freedom and preserving identity, a space for dialogue between artists, experts and the public about art as a form of
stability and resistance to the aggressor.