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Ukrainian Soviet monumental art is a distinct cultural phenomenon that has developed and existed for almost 70 years. It is a complicated and often controversial topic, full of complex questions that are difficult to fully understand or accept. Although it sits within a relatively short period in the broader history of art, this phenomenon has significant cultural and historical value. However, its art is disappearing rapidly, in plain sight. Unfortunately, today this monumental art has become an object of manipulation and exploitation through the criminal Kremlin’s propaganda. Due to such manipulations, Ukrainian society is ready to remove the cultural heritage of its complex, dramatic, colonial past. This stands in contradiction to the fact that Ukrainian people, even in totalitarian times, not only preserved their subjectivity, traditions, culture, and language, but, moreover, created a unique Ukrainian Soviet cultural phenomenon. Traces of that sovereign interpretation of historical remnants are now unfortunately disappearing completely and very rapidly. Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage includes works by Ivan Kavaleridze, Vasyl Borodai, Mykhailo Lysenko, and many other outstanding Ukrainian artists and is part of the world’s cultural heritage.
Over the past few decades, many important contemporary art practices have emerged in Ukraine that have aimed at a critical rethinking of the Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage and have thus tried to contribute to its preservation. For instance, Kateryna Lysovenko, whose actions are presented in this chapter, is working on a long-term project, Monumental Propaganda of the World of My Dreams, in which she reflects on the very essence of such a phenomenon as the promotion of state ideology in art. Created as icons, ancient sculptures of gods or emperors are today perceived as art, freed from their original ritualistic or political functions; the same can be done with the art of the Soviet period. Otherwise, both Soviet propaganda and decommunization processes will threaten to return art, its valorization, and its interpretation to the realm of the ethical. By contrast, Lysovenko says that in her practice she tries to reappropriate the socialist realist training that she received at the art academy, and she expresses her hope that Ukrainian society will also take up the challenge of a reflexive reappropriation of its own past rather than rejecting Soviet cultural heritage from the common experience and narratives of history.
This chapter therefore explores the methods of critical rethinking and reconceptualization of Ukrainian Soviet monumental art through the prism of the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists over the past few decades. These artists use subtle approaches that deconstruct harmful narratives – not with sledgehammers, but with precise and meaningful ideas. By engaging in this process, they are able to address the complex layers of Soviet monumental art, challenging its ideological underpinnings without destroying the art itself. Instead, they preserve its aesthetic and historical value while rethinking its significance for the world today.