Lecture series: Ukrainian-Slovak Season

Програма українською мовою

 

• Dates: 20–22 October 2026
• Venue: AFAD, Drotárska 44 and Hviezdoslavovo Square 18, Bratislava
• Organisers: Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Lviv National Academy of Arts and Transcarpathian Academy of Arts in Uzhorod

---

 

The Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design invites you to Ukrainian-Slovak Season, a lecture series organised in cooperation with Ukrainian art academies.

Lecture programme:

---

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Mykhaylo Pryymych

PhDr., rector of the Transcarpathian Academy of Arts in Uzhorod, Ukraine; professor in its Department of Applied and Decorative Art.

• The Horyanska Rotunda in the Context of European Artistic Processes: 13th–16th Centuries

• 9:30–11:00 a.m., Studio of the Department of Conservation and Restoration, AFAD, Drotárska 44, Room D 131

Marta Kravchenko

PhD, Associate Professor at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine.

• Art Jewelry and the Body in Contemporary Ukrainian Jewelry Art

• 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Metal and Jewelry Studio, AFAD, Drotárska 44, Room D 363

Ivan Nebesnyk

PhD, dean of the Faculty of Design and Applied and Decorative Art at the Transcarpathian Academy of Arts in Uzhorod, Ukraine; Associate Professor in its Department of Design.

• The Image of the Universal in Music Album Design of the Late 1960s–1970s

• 10:00–11:30 a.m., “Identity” Preparatory Course Studio, AFAD, Drotárska 44, Room D 317

 

---

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

Bohdana Hrynda

PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Contemporary Art Practices at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine.

• Fashion, Body and Identity: An Anthropological Reading of Twentieth-Century Visual Culture

• 1:00–2:30 p.m., AFAD, Hviezdoslavovo Square 18, Room H 135

Kateryna Pokora

Lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Art Practices at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine.

• Material Witnessing: Evidence, Testimony, and Artistic Practice

• 2:30–4:00 p.m., AFAD, Hviezdoslavovo Square 18, Room H 135

Yuliya Babunych

PhD, Head of Doctoral and Postdoctoral Studies at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine, and Associate Professor in its Department of Art History and Theory.

• Ukrainian Modernist Painters in International Artistic Circles: The Paris School

• 4:00–5:30 p.m., AFAD, Hviezdoslavovo Square 18, Room H 103

 

---

Thursday, 22 October 2026

Lada Tsymbala

PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Theory at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine.

• Ethnic Reflections of Ukrainian Fashion During Wartime: “Make, Do and Donate”

• 10:00–11:30 a.m., Fashion Design Studio, AFAD, Drotárska 44, Room D 343

Daryna Skrynnyk-Myska

PhD, Head of the Department of Contemporary Art Practices at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine.

• Seeing the Territory: Landscape, Positionality and War in Contemporary Ukrainian Art

• 4:00–5:30 p.m., AFAD, Hviezdoslavovo Square 18, Room H 135

 

---

Detailed Information:

---

Mykhaylo Pryymych

The Horiany Rotunda in the Context of European Artistic Processes of the 13th–16th Centuries

The Horiany Rotunda in Uzhhorod is one of the most enigmatic monuments of sacred architecture in Central-Eastern Europe, uniquely fusing an archaic six-conch Romanesque rotunda with a later Gothic nave. Beyond the persistent scholarly debates regarding its origins—ranging from the 10th to the 14th centuries—the building serves as a rare point of synthesis between Byzantine traditions and early Western European culture, positioning Transcarpathia as a vibrant crossroads of medieval artistic exchange.

The core of the lecture explores the monument’s preserved 14th-century fresco program, which displays direct stylistic parallels with Northern Italian Trecento painting and the circle of Giotto. This Italianate influence introduces a distinct humanist dimension, replacing rigid conventions with dramatic emotional expressiveness and psychological empathy, most powerfully captured in the Crucifixion and Last Supper cycles.

(back to program)

---

Ivan Nebesnyk

The Image of the Universal in Music Album Design (Late 1960s–1970s)

This lecture explores music album design of the late 1960s and 1970s as an autonomous phenomenon of visual culture, examining how the "image of the universal" was constructed through plastic and typographic strategies. This period marked a profound turning point defined by the countercultural revolution, the Space Age, and a surge of interest in mysticism and psychedelic experience. Within this milieu, the shift from commercial releases to conceptual vinyl LPs transformed the album sleeve into a genuine exhibition space and a site for interdisciplinary synthesis.

The presentation analyzes the cover as a complex semiotic field that transcended commercial packaging to become an independent visual statement. It investigates the synesthetic interplay between sound and image, tracing how collage, photographic experimentation, and intellectualized typography merged into a cohesive language. Drawing on a Jungian perspective, the lecture highlights the use of archetypal structures, Tarot iconography, and universal geometries to engage the collective unconscious. Finally, it addresses a key late-modernist strategy—the omission of band and album names in favor of pure symbols—which hermetically sealed meaning, sacralized the artifact, and laid the groundwork for contemporary visual communication.

(back to program)

---

Marta Kravchenko

Art Jewellery and the Body in Contemporary Ukrainian Jewellery Art

This lecture explores the relationship between jewellery and the human body in contemporary Ukrainian jewellery art. Jewellery is considered an autonomous artistic statement in which the body becomes a site of display, a participant in the creation of meaning, and a bearer of individual and collective experience. The focus is on the ways in which jewellery objects delineate, complement, or transform corporeality.

Drawing on examples of contemporary Ukrainian jewellery practices, the lecture examines the interrelationships between form, material, scale, and modes of wearing, as well as the significance of touch, movement, and bodily sensations in the perception of the artwork. Attention is paid to the use of unconventional materials and the interaction between jewellery and the wearer’s body. The lecture reveals the potential of jewellery as an intimate yet public artistic medium that connects personal histories with broader social processes.

(back to program) 

---

Bohdana Hrynda

Fashion, Body and Identity: An Anthropological Reading of Twentieth-Century Visual Culture

This lecture explores twentieth-century fashion as a cultural practice through which the body becomes socially visible, meaningful, and implicated in the construction of identity. Rather than approaching fashion primarily as a history of changing styles, it considers the dressed body as a site where cultural norms, social distinctions, gender roles, and individual and collective identities are negotiated.

Beginning with the transformation of the female silhouette in the early twentieth century, the lecture traces the emergence of the modern body as mobile, represented, observed, and increasingly constructed through visual culture. It examines the role of fashion photography, magazines, and cinema in producing models of bodily appearance and self-perception; the use of style by youth cultures and subcultures as a means of belonging, differentiation, and symbolic resistance; and the growing understanding of the body in the 1980s and 1990s as a project of self-fashioning and gendered identity.

Drawing on cultural anthropology, visual culture, and fashion studies, the lecture ultimately asks how clothing and images participate not simply in expressing who we are, but in shaping how we understand, construct, and represent ourselves.

 (back to program)

---

Kateryna Pokora

Material witnessing: evidence, testimony, and artistic practice

Drawing on Susan Schuppli’s concept of the material witness, the talk will consider how matter and living organisms can register environmental and political events and become forms of evidence. Through my research on cyanobacterial blooms in the Dnipro, I will reflect on a project in which I explored these ideas through artistic and material experiments, discussing the methods, theoretical sources, and questions that shaped the work.

(back to program)

---

Yuliya Babunych

Ukrainian Modernist Painters in International Artistic Circles: The Paris School.

This presentation examines the problem of the activities of Ukrainian modernist painters outside of Ukraine. The relevance of the problem is given by the need to study the artistic experience of Ukrainian artists in emigration and its connection with the sources of national culture. Many current art phenomena in the combination of national and multicultural experiences have established themselves outside the Ukrainian ethnic lands, primarily in the leading art centers of Europe. In this connection, one of the foreign centers of creative activity of Ukrainian modernists of the first third of the 20th century, namely Paris, was analyzed. At the same time, it was found that Ukrainian modernists in emigration had a certain commonality of creative qualities, in particular, in the area of individual treatment of plastic form and in the field of color. Many artists from Ukraine demonstrate commitment to national cultural and artistic traditions in the context of developing their own pictorial concepts and worldview orientations. The introduction of national elements of Ukrainian culture into the artistic space of European modernism played an important role.

 (back to program)

---

Lada Tsymbala

Ethnic Reflections of Ukrainian Fashion During Wartime: “Make Do and Donate”

The lecture explores the profound transformation of the Ukrainian fashion industry during the years of full-scale war, tracking its evolution from early ethno-patriotism to highly specialized adaptive and military fashion. By framing modern dynamics within a historical context, the presentation draws a direct comparison between the fashion ethos of World War II and contemporary Ukraine. While the structural reality of WWII was defined by the British government's slogan "Make Do and Mend" due to severe material shortages, modern Ukrainian fashion has rephrased this philosophy into a powerful, community-driven mandate: "Make Do and Donate."

The topic highlights how the focus of Ukrainian fashion has shifted over the years of conflict. The initial response to the invasion was marked by explicit ethno-patriotic expressions, utilizing the national flag's blue and yellow colors, artisan sources, and folklore motifs to visually build national solidarity and attract global attention. Over the course of the ongoing conflict, this initial patriotic surge has matured into a sophisticated dual model. On one hand, mass-market and luxury designers continue to weave unique national codes into high fashion as an enduring symbol of identity. On the other hand, the industry has rapidly pivoted toward practicality, fundraising functions, and adaptive clothing designed to meet harsh wartime realities. The analysis concludes that modern Ukrainian fashion has transcended mere aesthetic reaction; it now operates as a critical humanitarian tool, a fundraising mechanism for the army, and a unified expression of the nation's resilient cultural code.

(back to program)

---

Daryna Skrynnyk-Myska

Seeing the Territory: Landscape, Positionality and War in Contemporary Ukrainian Art

What happens to the landscape image when the territory it represents is shaped by war?

This lecture examines how contemporary Ukrainian artists rethink landscape not simply as a genre, but as a culturally constructed way of seeing and relating to territory. Focusing on two works — Roman Khimei’s Four Slag Heaps from Which the Occupied Donbas Can Be Seen (2022) and Danylo Pavlii’s View of the Tysa (2025) — the lecture explores how political meaning can emerge without directly depicting war.

Khimei constructs a panoramic landscape from fragments of different photographs, creating an apparent total view while simultaneously revealing its impossibility. Pavlii, by contrast, uses the conventional form of a river landscape and situates it at the Ukrainian-Romanian border, supplementing the painting with a geolocation marker that makes the artist’s position of observation visible.

Bringing these two works together, the lecture considers how war changes not only what landscape represents, but also the conditions under which territory can be seen, accessed and understood. It proposes that the political dimension of landscape may reside not in visible images of conflict, but in the organization of the gaze itself.

(back to program)

---