Biedarieva Svitlana
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian–Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) and editor of collections such as Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 (ibidem Press, 2021), among others. She is editor general of the book series The Harvard History of Ukrainian Art (to be published soon).
She is holding the presidential position at the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) and she is a co-founder of the Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network. Her articles have been published in leading media and academic papers such as October, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Financial Times and The Art Newspaper. She has a PhD in history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University.
Website: https://svitlanabiedarieva.com/
Bibliography
BOOKS
Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.
Art in Ukraine: Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance, ed. Svitlana Biedarieva, texts by Asia Bazdyrieva, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Kateryna Filyuk, Illia Levchenko, Alisa Lozhkina, Kseniya Nuril, Oleksandra Osadcha, Ewa Sulek, Jessica Zychowicz, foreword by Vitaly Chernetsky, London and New York: Routledge, 2024.
Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, ed. Svitlana Biedarieva, texts by Eva Astakhovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martyniuk, Lina Michelkevičė, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Margaret Tali, Jessica Zychowicz. Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2021.
At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 / La línea del frente. El arte ucraniano, 2013–2019 / На лінії фронту: українське мистецтво, 2013–2019, exhibition catalogue, ed. Svitlana Biedarieva and Hanna Deikun, texts by Yevgenia Belorusets, William Blacker, Svitlana Biedarieva, Hanna Deikun, Olia Mykhailiuk, Oleksandra Haidai, Olesya Khromeychuk, César Martínez, Jean Meyer, Lada Nakonechna, Mykola Ridnyi and others, Mexico City and Kyiv: Editorial 17 and the International Renaissance Foundation, 2020.
SELECTED CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES
"Intellectuals against neocolonialism: Fostering knowledge, resistance, and agency," ed. Nicole Barría-Asenjo, Intellectuals in the 21st Century. Reconfiguring Ideologies and Global Struggles Against the Elitization of Knowledge, New York and London: Routledge, 2026 (forthcoming).
"Epistemic Resistance: What U.S. Universities Can Learn from Ukrainian Art," Art Margins Online, MIT Press, May 19, 2025.
"Decolonization and disentanglement in Ukrainian art," ed. Kateryna Botanova, Reclaiming History: Decoloniality and Art in Ukraine after 1991, Kyiv: Publish Pro and PinchukArtCentre, 2025, 94–107.
"Oleksandr Roitburd," "Ukrainian New Wave," and "Pavlo Makov," entries for Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, February–May 2025.
"Open Group's Repeat after Me II: Echoing the war," ed. Marta Czyż, Repeat after Me II. Catalogue of the Polish Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, Warsaw: Zachęta National Gallery, 2024.
"Unfolding coloniality: Ecocide as the erasure of memory," ed. Adrian Ivakhiv, Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025.
"The decolonized body: Corporeality, violence, and objectification in recent Ukrainian art," ed. Natalia Klimenko, Viktoriya Sereda, and Miglė Bareikytė, Images and Objects of the Russo-Ukraine War, Berlin: Forum Transregionale Studien and Transcript Verlag, 2025.
"From the postcolonial condition to the decolonial option," Ukrainian Decolonial Glossary, ed. Yulia Eliyas, Anastasiia Omelianiuk, and Iva Naidenko, 2024.
"Ukrainische Künstler:innen im Widerstand gegen die großangelegte Invasion: Dekolonialisierung in der Kunst nach dem 24. Februar 2022," Ukraine-Analysen, No. 293 (January 18, 2024). "Dekolonizacja i wyzwolenie w sztuce ukraińskiej," Konteksty: Polska Sztuka Ludowa, No. 343 (4), 2023, "Westplaining Ukraine: Lost in translation," WunderKombināts. Latvian Art Yearbook, No. 2 (November 37–41, 2023).
"The Morphology of War," Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (MIT Press), Vol. 152 (Spring 2023), 23–24.
"Ways to Murder with a Flag: Paradoxical discourse and subversive affirmation in the art of Odesa conceptualists," ed. Maya Toteva, Tom Williams, and Gediminas Gasparavičius, Walking with the Enemy: Reclaiming the Language of Power and Manipulation in the Post-Truth Era, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026.
"The Morphology of War: Against neo-colonial narcissism," ed. Tanel Rander, Hüvasti, Ida! Hüvasti, Narcissus!/ Goodbye, East! Goodbye, Narcissus!, Tallinn: EKKM, 2023, 95–99.
"Ukrainian wartime art: Anti-colonial resistance in a decolonial age," Immediations, No. 19 (2022), 34–38.
"Decolonizing Ukrainian art history in research and teaching," ASEEES NewsNet, Vol. 62, No. 6 (November 2022), 3–5.
"Decolonization and disentanglement in Ukrainian art," post on MoMA post, June 2, 2022. Available online at: https://post.moma.org/decolonization-and-disentanglement-in-ukrainian-art/.
"Art communities at risk: On Ukraine," October, Vol. 179 (Winter 2022) (MIT Press), 137–149.
"Women's history as the history of dispossession in contemporary Ukrainian art," ed. Jessica Zychowicz, Freedom Taking Place: War, Women and Culture at the Intersection of Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus, London: Vernon Press, 2023, 23–36.
"On the concept of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ukraine," Art Margins Online (MIT Press), November 11, 2021.
"The documentary turn in new Ukrainian art," ed. Svitlana Biedarieva, Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2021, 53–78.
"The face of the conflict: Ukrainian artists at the frontline," ed. Svitlana Biedarieva and Hanna Deikun, At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019/La línea del frente. El arte ucraniano, 2013–2019/На лінії фронту: Українське мистецтво, 2013–2019, exhibition catalogue, Mexico City and Kyiv: International Renaissance Foundation, 2020, 12–15.
"El cuerpo barroco. El exceso y el vacío en el performance contemporáneo," ed. Pancho López, Primer Concurso de Teoría de Performance/Cuerpo, Mexico City: Secretariat of Culture, National Center for the Arts of Mexico, and PerfoRedMx, 2020.
"Mexico 1968 – Beginning of the age of discrepancies: Interview with Cuauhtémoc Medina about Mexico '68," Art Margins Online (MIT Press), April 30, 2018.
"The street artist as translator," Space and Culture (SAGE Publishing), Vol. 19, No. 1, February 2016, 4–14.
SELECTED PRESS PUBLICATIONS
Ukraine in Global Studies, LB.ua, September 24, 2025.
Institutional Transformation and Cultural Decolonization in Ukraine, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Blog, August 16, 2023.
Mexican Politics of Representation Regarding the War in Ukraine: A Possibility of Dialogue Through Culture, Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Blog, May 24, 2023.
Post presents: Art, Resistance, and New Narratives in Response to the War in Ukraine, co-authors: Inga Lāce, Nikita Kadan, Lesia Khomenko, and Ewa Sulek, April 26, 2023.
Bowl of Shadows. Danuta Kril Preserves Ukraine's Smoked-Ceramic Craft, Disegno. The Journal of Design, No. 35 (Spring 2023), 80.
Alevtina Kakhidze: Portrait of the Artist, Burlington Contemporary, July 27, 2022.
Magical Universes of Maria Prymachenko, Flash Art, Czech/Slovak edition, No. 65 (October–November 2022), 18–21.
The Ukrainian Artists Making Work as Acts of Resistance, Financial Times, March 28, 2022.
Art Under Attack. 30 years of Ukrainian Resistance, Contemporary Art Stavanger, March 24, 2022.
The Front Line: Between Mexico and Canada, Prostory, September 22, 2020.
Crimea's Amazing History Told Through Art, Hyperallergic, May 3, 2019.
Xavier Le Roy en el Museo Jumex, La Tempestad, No. 140, November 2018.
Habitar el Modernismo: Leonor Antunes en México, Revista Código, June 12, 2018.
The Importance of Havana's First Alternative Biennial for the Cuban Art Scene, Hyperallergic, May 25, 2018.
Mario Pani: Arquitectura en Proceso, Revista Código, No. 96, Dec. 2016 – Jan. 2017.
Isaac Julien, Playtime/Kapital: Somos Todos Capitalistas?, Revista Código, September 27, 2016.
La Modernidad Frágil: Arte Brasileño en el MUNAL, La Tempestad, August 4, 2016.