Displaced Art and the Reconstruction of Memory: Ukrainian Artists from Crimea and Donbas

Abstract

After the occupation of Crimea and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, many people were forced to leave their homes and look for a new place to live. The cultural context, memories, narratives, including the scarcely built identity of artificially made sites like those from Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) and the multicultural identity of Crimea, were all destroyed and left behind. Among the people who left their roots and moved away were many artists, who naturally fell into two groups-the ones who wanted to remember and the ones who wanted to forget. The aim of this paper is to analyse the ways in which the local memory of those lost places is represented in the works of Ukrainian artists from the conflict territories, who were forced to change their dwelling- place. The main idea is to show how losing the memory of places, objects, sounds, etc. affects the continuity of personal history.

Keywords

• migration
• exile
• nomad
• memory
• home