What Should the Art of Justice Look Like in Ukraine? The Cultural Sector as a Site of Atrocity and Resistance in War

This conversation invites reflection on the role of culture and art in wartime — a shift from seeing culture as something secondary to realizing that we are fighting, above all, for identity and the right to shape our own future.

It is also about art as political imagination, the aestheticization of violence, and the ethics of justice in artistic practice.

Speakers:

• Alim Aliev, Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute — on culture and art as elements of national security.
• Olha Birzul, film curator, cultural manager, festival selector, and coordinator of cultural diplomacy projects — on cinema as one of the most unjust forms of art.
• Yuliia Hnat, co-founder of the NGO Museum of Contemporary Art — on Ukraine’s demand for subjectivity in the global cultural space.

Moderator: Veronika Skliarova, cultural manager, founder of the NGO Art Dot and head of the Art Therapy Force project.

The forum was implemented in partnership with King’s College London, NGO Art Dot, and the Kyiv School of Economics, with the participation of Cultural Forces of Ukraine—a platform bringing together the military, artists, and businesses to support the mental health of Ukraine’s Defense Forces, foster civil-military cooperation, and advance cultural diplomacy.