Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak ‘Nevermore’

The Ukrainian Institute of America is pleased to announce an exhibition of mixed-media artworks by Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak. The exhibition runs from May 15 through June 21, 2015. An opening reception for the artist was held on Friday, May 15, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Bodnar-Balahutrak explores identity and cultural ties, initiating a discourse about one’s place in the world by piecing together fragments of text, narrative, and figuration. The artist’s work is both a visual documentary of pivotal world events – particularly in Ukraine – and an ongoing exploration of the nature of language and behavior. They begin as extensive collages of clipped newspaper articles and photos, collected mementoes and keepsakes, arranged in a sort of self-perpetuating dialogue, over which she applies charcoal, paint, and wax. The process of layering words, images, and various media reflect the artist’s deep interest in how experiences submerge, resurface, and unravel over time.

The exhibition’s title, Nevermore, invokes the refrain from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and asks: does history repeat itself? To answer, the artist’s work beckons to acknowledge, to discuss, to commemorate what has happened in the past and what is happening now, and not just “let the grass grow over it.”

In the spring of 1991, Bodnar-Balahutrak was awarded an IREX grant to travel to her ancestral homeland for the first time. Subsequently, she made additional trips to Ukraine that included a visit to the Chornobyl Zone in 1996, which left a lasting impression of nature’s power of reclamation – simultaneous shrouding and healing. Images of roots breaking through concrete and vines growing over wreckage have remained recurring visual motifs for the artist. In recent small mixed-media works on paper, animals enact human nature in fable-like parables.

Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio by parents who emigrated from Ukraine after World War II. She earned a BS in art education from Kent State University, and an MFA in painting from George Washington University, in conjunction
with the Corcoran School of Art.

Bodnar-Balahutrak exhibited with numerous national and international museums and galleries. A monograph of her work was published in 2005. In 2012, the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts (Spring, TX) presented a survey exhibition of projects spanning two decades. Her most recent solo exhibition, Nature Studies, at the Hunter Gather Project Gallery in Houston, centered on the current socio-political climate of Ukraine.

Her artworks are included in the permanent collections of Oxford University, England; Mus-eo D’Arte Dell’Universita Cattholica, Rome, Italy; Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts; University of Houston; Tyler Museum of Art; Amarillo Museum; El Paso Museum of Art; The Art Museum of South Texas; The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago; The Ukrainian Museum, New York, among others.

Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak lives and works in Houston, where she currently teaches at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Exhibition hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 12-6pm, or by appointment.

For press inquiries, please contact: Olena Sidlovych at (212) 288-8660 or mail@ukrainianinstitute.org.

Note: The Ukrainian Institute will be closed June 4 and June 11.