For Democracy and Dignity. A Photo Exhibit from Euromaidan

The Exhibit ‘For Democracy and Dignity’ consists of three parts:

1. Collaborative project.

Collaborative project by Laada Bilaniuk, Jennifer J. Carroll, Emily Channell, Jennifer Dickinson, Deborah A. Jones and Elizabeth A. Peacock. This project emerged from the collaborative effort of six anthropologists who have lived and extensively conducted research in Ukraine. In creating this and other public exhibitions, they aim to increase public awareness of the trials, tragedies, and changes that Ukraine has gone through, to problematize and complicate overly-simplistic explanations of these events, and to reveal the human face of Ukraine that emerged throughout the Maidan movement.

Laada Bilaniuk is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Her research examines the politics of language and identity in popular culture in Ukraine.

Jennifer J. Carroll is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Washington. Her research explores the implementation of public health and HIV prevention programs in Ukraine.

Emily Channell is a Doctoral Candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research investigates the roots of student and youth political activism in Ukraine.

Jennifer Dickinson is an Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. Her research is based in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region, where she has studied language ideology and culture in story-telling, advertising, and deaf/sign communities.

Deborah A. Jones is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research is based in Odesa and Vinnytsia oblasts, where she studies former collective farming communities, land rights, and non-elites’ encounters with the Ukrainian legal system.

Elizabeth A. Peacock is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. Her research examines issues of language and identity among the first generation of post-socialist Ukraine.

2. Artwork and photographs of Euromaidan by Mykola Zhuravel.

Mykola Zhuravel, born in 1960 in Ukraine. Zhuravel graduated from the prestigious Kyiv State Arts Academy in 1989 and currently resides and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. The artist is a member of the National Artists’ Union of Ukraine since 1995 and the BG-ART Association, the Kyiv-based artists’ association, since 1999.

3. Euromaidan photographs by Larysa Sendich and Oleksii Semenenko.

Larysa Sendich, born to Ukrainian and Bosnian parents, spent her childhood between the cultures of what her immigrant family remembered as home, and life as an American citizen. Currently, Larysa is focused in working in the Ukraine Region, exploring the historical impact – culturally, physically and emotionally left on the landscape and people of this region. Her photographs have been featured in numerous group exhibitions and publications. She currently lives in Brooklyn. For more information about Larysa Sendich and her works visit http://larysasendich.com/

Oleksii Semenenko, a native Ukrainian, holds a post-graduate degree in design of antique interiors from the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His passion for photography and design, however, brought him to work for commercial magazines and publications, such as “Welcome to Ukraine”, “International Tourism”, “Burda Ukraine” and “Cosmopolitan.” In 1999 started his own advertising agency which was highly awarded for the achievements in the field of photography. Oleksii Semenenko’s works are exhibited in private galleries in Ukraine, Hungary, France and Great Britain. For more information about Oleksii Semenenko and his works visit www.alexsimon-gallery.com.

The Ukrainian Institute gives a special note of thanks to Mykola Yaremko from Speedpro Imaging for printing the photographs in this exhibit free of charge.