Lesia Khomenko: IMAGE AND PRESENCE

27 April – 2 September 2023
The Ukrainian Museum
222 East 6th St NY NY 10003

11.30 AM – 5.00 PM
Closed Monday – Tuesday
212 228 0110 – info@ukrainianmuseum.org

Lesia Khomenko is an acclaimed multidisciplinary artist from Ukraine who since the Russian invasion has been the focus of global media discussion and attention. Her approach is to reconsider the role of painting:  she deconstructs narrative images and transforms paintings into objects, installations, performances, videos.  Her artworks have mocked Soviet Socialist Realism’s erroneous attempt to create a perfect utopian society and fantasy people, and she has probed past state-sanctioned creativity and its long-lasting impact on current artistic practices.

This exhibition, Khomenko’s first solo museum show in North America, reflects on the artist’s creative method and her incessant investigations of identity and politics, particularly in the context of the Russian war in Ukraine. It features works from four series:

The Countdown series reimagines prominent socialist realist battle paintings by Soviet Ukrainian artists. In her canvases, Khomenko eliminates the valorous figures of soldiers and military equipment, presenting instead a depopulated terrain.

Fragmented Surveillance, with life-size paintings created for the Ukrainian Museum, builds upon the haze of war in cyberspace. The intentional, protective technique of blurring soldiers’ faces, strategic sites, and landscapes on photographs from military zones finds its way into Khomenko’s portrayal of unidentified armed figures.

The transportable paintings in the MPATS series capture Khomenko’s own experience of living through a war and evacuation, and witnessing warfare in real time. (MPATS = man-portable anti-tank system)

In her new series AJS (After Janet Sobel), Khomenko initiates a dialogue with the Abstract Expressionist painter whose works are also on display at the Ukrainian Museum. The installation bridges decades of narratives that were fragmented and concealed due to forced migration, resocialization, ruptures, and survivals.

Born in Kyiv in 1980, Khomenko graduated from the National Academy of Art and Architecture in 2004.  She has had several solo exhibitions in Ukraine and has taken part in numerous group shows around the world, including Women at War at New York’s Fridman Gallery in 2022, which Fridman followed in 2023 with her first solo U.S. exhibition, Full Scale.  While Khomenko lives and works in Kyiv, she has been in the U.S. temporarily since fleeing the Russian invasion with her daughter in March 2022, while her artist-musician husband Max serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.