On 23 April, a major exhibition titled Ukrainian Dreamers: Kharkiv School of Photography will open in Lithuania, featuring works by more than 33 artists across four generations — from the 1960s to the present day. The Ukrainian Institute announced this on its Facebook page.
The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with MOKSOP and the Radvilų rūmų dailės muziejus. It traces the development of the Kharkiv School of Photography — from the Soviet period through the years of Ukraine’s independence to the current war — showing how photography evolved into a means of artistic expression and a tool of social critique.
The exhibition will take place at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art and will be the first major presentation of the Kharkiv School of Photography in Lithuania. The project also highlights historical links between Ukrainian and Lithuanian photography that date back to the Soviet period.
The opening will be accompanied by the international academic symposium Amateur Photo Clubs in the USSR and Satellite States in the 1950s–1980s, which will take place on 24–25 April and will be open to the public. The event will bring together 18 researchers from Central and Eastern European countries, with a keynote lecture delivered by Jessica Wernecke.
The project has been implemented as part of the Ukrainian Institute’s Visualise programme, with support from the European Union under the House of Europe programme, as well as in cooperation with The Cultural Diplomacy Foundation, the Embassy of Lithuania in Ukraine, and funding from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.