About Ukraine

All the stereotypes that Poles held about Ukraine collapsed in the last several days. The image of Ukraine as a steppe or rich black earth, the Cossack as the most important historical figure, the political unrest, the split between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of nobility and Ruthenia, the Crimea described in sonnets – all this disappeared, replaced by pictures of war, evidence of Russian aggression.

Ukraine, whose freedom and independence we took for granted, appears in Russian war propaganda as a scandal in history, a prank demanding correction. Its citizens are portrayed as fascists, while the armed attack is presented as a peaceful intervention. Therefore, in order to fend off the language of lies and contempt, so that the #slavaUkraini hashtag would not be defeated by the Z sign, we would like to remind the history of Ukraine, where it came from, how Polish and Ukrainian artists have seen it over the last 200 years, and how the ICC has been bringing it closer to Polish readers for many years. Visitors of our Gallery could see the exhibitions "Ukraine. Waiting for a Hero. Kostyrko, Ravski" (2016), "The Armenian Cathedral and Its Creators" (2015–2016) “Lviv, 24th June 1937. City, Architecture, Modernism" (2017–2018), "The Myth of Galicia" (2014–2015), and the ICC publishing house has released books on Ukraine, such as “Lwów. O odczytywaniu miasta na nowo” (Lviv: Interpreting the City Anew) by Katarzyna Kotyńska or "The Idea of Galicia. History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture" by Larry Wolff. This series of close-ups on the subject culminated in the exhibition "Ukraine. A Different Angle on Neighbourhood," which ended just a few weeks before the outbreak of war.