On March 28, 2023, the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Arts in Lodz (Poland) hosted a book signing and presentation of the book by Serhiy Bielinski and Yulia Ivashko “A światłość w siemności świeci…” (“And the light shines in the darkness…”). The meeting was hosted by Dr. Lukasz Mikołaj Sadowski. According to Yulia Ivashko, Professor of the Department of Architecture and Architectural Design, this meeting with the presentation of the book published by the Krakow-based Impuls Publishing House was a logical continuation of the briefing at the Interfax Agency, when the first public presentation of both the book and an art project aimed at popularizing the work of wartime artists and, as Anastasia Urakina (a graduate student at the Department of Architecture and Architectural Design) announced, art therapy for those returning from the front line. In a short time, this project from Europe has already spread to Japan.
The art project about the war in Ukraine presented earlier at the Interfax-Ukraine agency also received a scientific component: in addition to photographs and videos by Serhiy Belinsky, photographs of the destruction of Bakhmut taken by a scientist at war, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Denys Mykhailovskyi, were shown during the meeting at the Academy of Arts.
According to Yulia Ivashko, today the main efforts to present and financially support this project with the participation of artists and scientists who are at war have been taken over by Polish partners. Today, the international art project of this format, which was founded immediately after the outbreak of the war, is the first and so far the only one, and the constant expansion of the number of exhibitions, conferences, publications and films shows the interest in the world. Yulia Ivashko hopes that their initiative will attract the attention of other artists at war. For them, participation in such a project is both a popularization of their work and a kind of art therapy.
Watch the video presentation:
Based on materials by Y. Ivashko and S. Belinsky
