Oksana Briukhovetska

Oksana Briukhovetska is an artist, curator, art writer, graphic designer, and activist. She graduated from the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture in Kyiv in 2003. She explores social themes through the study of personal experience focusing on topics of memory, and social and gender trauma. In her work, she also addresses the issue of Ukrainian labor migration, the impacts of the ongoing military conflict, and the realities of motherhood.

For nearly a decade (2011–19), she worked as a curator at the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv where, together with other female colleagues, she focused on feminist attitudes in Ukrainian art. In her curatorial projects, she confronts the position of women in post-Soviet societies, emphasizing the need to stand up for the rights of women and minorities. Her strong activist attitude informs her curatorial practice – the exhibitions she has (co)curated have a strong, engaged character. Ukrainian Body (2012) tackled topics of corporeality, poverty, and the experiences of marginalized groups in Ukraine, and Lockout (2014) and I am Ukrainka (2018) focused on labor in post-Soviet space and Ukrainian labor migration. Briukhovetska curated and edited catalogues for two powerful feminist exhibitions: Motherhood and What in me is Feminine? (2015), and for TEXTUS: Embroidery, Textile, Feminism and Women’s Texts (2017).

The book The Right to Truth: Conversations on Art and Feminism (2019), which she co-edited with Lesia Kulchynska, is a compilation of conversations between female artists and cultural workers about contemporary art and feminism that goes far beyond the feminist discourse centered in Western Europe. It questions the reality of feminist art in the post-Soviet space, particularly in Ukraine and Belarus, while forming alliances with international feminist practices. In recent years, Briukhovetska has lived in the US where she has been researching and writing a new book that aims to present a more critical discussion of race and the anti-racist struggle to a Ukrainian audience. (2022)