Botanova Kateryna
Kateryna Botanova (Kyiv/Basel) is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, a Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival, among them Culturescapes 2021 Amazonia: Anthology as Cosmology; On the Edge: Culturescapes 2019 Poland; Culturescapes 2023: Sahara (upcoming).
She was a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert.
A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on arts and culture. Recently, her essays and articles appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Eurozine, Osteuropa, Various Artists, Dwutygodnik, Tagesspiegel, Atlantic Council.
Her essays were included in Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art. Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021. Ibidem, 2021; Future We Are Longing For. Tempora, 2020; Bridges Not Walls: What Unites Ukrainians. VSL, 2020.
Bibliography
Decolonial thinking and artistic practice in Ukraine after February 2022. In Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth, edited by Adrian Ivakhiv. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025.
Повернення образу. У "Документування війни: між Україною та світом", Documenting Ukraine, Львів, 2025, 99-108.
Art as Evidence: Artistic Practices in Ukraine and the Materiality of War. In Images and Objects of the Russo-Ukraine War, edited by Miglė Bareikytė, Natasha Klimenko, and Viktoriya Sereda. Forum Transregionale Studien – Dossiers, 5/2025, Bielefeld, transcript Verlag, 2025.
On European Orient. Ukraine’s Twofold Decolonial War. In Decolonising Art. Beyond the Obvious (Also in Ukrainian: Про європейський орієнт: Подвійна деколоніальна війна України), edited by Tetyana Filevska. Ist publishing, 2025.
Becoming Local: Decolonial Practices in Visual Arts in post-Maidan Ukraine. In Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance, edited by Svitlana Biedarieva, Routledge, 2024.
The Art of Misunderstanding. In Ukraine's Many Faces: Land, People, and Culture Revisited. Olena Palko, Manuel Férez Gil (eds.), Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023.
Artist as a virus. Political transformations and art in Ukraine after 1991. In Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art. Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021. Ed. Svitlana Biedarieva. Ibidem, 2021.
