Ukrainian Dreamers: The Kharkiv School Of Photography

Exhibition and Academic Symposium. 23–25 April 2026

Evgeniy Pavlov, Alternative, 1985. Gelatine silver print, photomontage, 30 × 40 cm. Collection of the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography

Jointly organized by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP), the exhibition Ukrainian Dreamers: The Kharkiv School of Photography will open at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art in Vilnius on 23 April 2026.

 

The exhibition presents a unique artistic community encompassing four generations of Ukrainian artists, from the 1960s to the present day. Throughout the era of Soviet censorship, the turbulent years of Ukraine’s independence, successive revolutions, and the onset of Russian military aggression, Kharkiv photographers have consistently expanded the boundaries of the photographic medium, transforming it into a powerful instrument of aesthetic expression and social critique.

 

The exhibition brings together works by thirty-three artists, presented chronologically to highlight the continuity of the school’s methods and ideas. Shown in Lithuania for the first time, the exhibition traces the historical and artistic contexts in which the Kharkiv School developed, while also acknowledging long-standing creative connections with Lithuanian photography. During the Soviet period, Lithuania – home to the only state photographers’ association in the USSR – served as an important point of reference for Kharkiv artists seeking to affirm photography’s status as an art form. The exhibition of Kharkiv photographers in Vilnius thus serves as a long-overdue tribute to these creative ties.

 

The exhibition opening will coincide with a two-day international academic symposium “Amateur Photo Clubs in the USSR and Satellite States in the 1950s–1980s”, to be held on 24–25 April 2026. Open to the public, the symposium examines amateur photo clubs as sites of artistic experimentation and nonconformist practice within socialist cultural infrastructures. The programme features eighteen scholars from across Central and Eastern Europe, with a keynote lecture by Dr Jessica Werneke (University of Iowa, USA).

 

Designed by Vytautas Volbekas, an English-language exhibition catalogue features six scholarly essays and an extensively illustrated chronology of the school.

 

Supported by the European Union through the House of Europe programme, the Cultural Diplomacy Foundation, the Ukrainian Institute as a part of the Visualise programme, and financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.

 

 

Participating artists:

Boris Mikhailov, Gennadiy Tubalev, Oleg Maliovany, Oleksandr Suprun, Jury Rupin, Viktor Kochetov, Oleksandr Sitnichenko, Volodymyr Shaposhnykov, Evgeniy Pavlov, Anatoliy Makiyenko, Vita Mikhailov, Tetiana Pavlova, Roman Pyatkovka, Volodymyr Starko, Misha Pedan, Sergiy Solonsky, Grigoriy Okun, Boris Redko, Sergiy Bratkov, Igor Manko, Sergiy Kochetov, Bella Logachova, Vasylisa Nezabarom, Yulia Drozdek, Serhiy Popov, Vladyslav Krasnoshchok, Roman Minin, Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Mykola Ridnyi, Hanna Kryvenstova, Igor Chekachkov, Andrii Rachynskyi, Alina Kleitman.

 

 

About the Organisers

 

The Lithuanian National Museum of Art is the largest national art museum in Lithuania. It consists of nine departments across four cities and organises more than sixty exhibitions annually, both in its own spaces and in collaboration with institutions in Lithuania and abroad. As one of the LNMA departments, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art hosts exhibitions by prominent Lithuanian and international artists.

 

The Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography is the first museum of contemporary photography in Ukraine, established in 2018. A core part of its collection consists of prints, negatives, and archival materials related to the artists of the Kharkiv School. Following the escalation of Russian military aggression, MOKSOP evacuated its collection and archives to Germany in 2022. The museum team continues their publishing, research, and curatorial activities in exile.

 

Curators: Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Boris and Vita Mikhailov, Darius Vaičekauskas, Olena Chervonik, Oleksandra Osadcha

Symposium organisers: Olena Chervonik, Gintarė Krasuckaitė, Oleksandra Osadcha

 

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Radvila Palace Museum of Art,
24 Vilniaus st, LT-01402, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 250 5824