2022 Southern Utah Museum of Art

«Reclaiming Agency: Ukrainian Women Photographers Today»

Reclaiming Agency: Ukrainian Women Photographers Today presents works by ten Ukrainian female photographers, who have all been active in the decades following Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Soviet period, photography was not approved by the communist regime as an official artistic medium. Although underground artists in Soviet Russia rarely worked with photography, a group working in Kharkiv, Ukraine utilized this medium exclusively. This collective, whose members were predominantly male, came to be known as the Kharkiv School of Photography. What these Soviet-era underground artistic milieus shared—both in Russia and Ukraine—was a scarcity of female artists and an absence of female photographers. In Ukraine, this situation continued beyond the Soviet period into the 21st century; it was only in the late 2000s that the number of women artist-photographers began to grow. More and more women have joined men in taking private courses in photography despite the continued dearth of university-level programs in the medium. This exhibition gives a platform to these groundbreaking voices and a new audience for their singular visions. >>>

Guest-curated  Dr. Joanna Matuszak Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History.