Ukrainian artists keep on creating in the face of adversity. 

‘Language is as beautiful as this world. So when someone destroys your world, language reflects that,’ said Ukraine poet, screenwriter, and journalist Lyuba Yakimchuk.

Although Yakimchuk has taken shelter she has continued to use her voice. The poet recently attended a virtual poetry reading where she shared her work as well as the harsh realities of her current situation like being awakened by explosions at 4 a.m.

“Our plan is to stay in Kyiv and try to be helpful. Tomorrow, we are going to donate blood for Ukrainian soldiers. I guess it won’t be easy for us, but … Putin’s regime will fall apart,” she said in a recent interview with CBC. “We will be witnesses.”

Art is powerful. It is influential and can move people into social action. It is also a record. If historians record the facts artists record the emotions, sharing and preserving their pains and joys.

As Ukrainians continue to face the devastating reality of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian artists around the world are fighting back in the lens of cameras, on the strokes of paint on canvases and the carefully crafted prose of poetry, music and journalism. 

On February 22, Ukrainian-Russian artist Aljoscha stood naked in front of the Motherland Monument in Kyiv. Just two days before the invasion, Aljoscha staged this piece as an anti-war protest. The monument is one of the few remaining symbols of Soviet communism in Ukraine.  

Aljoscha wrote on his website, “The suffering and war must be stopped!”

On February 23, Berlin-based Ukrainian artist Volo Bevza was readying himself for the opening of his solo exhibition, Soft Image, at WT Foundation in Kyiv. Despite the looming threat of the Russian invasion Bevza was determined to open the exhibition the following day on the 24. 

“I saw it as a kind of protest against Russian aggression,” he said in an interview with Hyperallergic. “Spreading panic, misinformation, disorientation and fear is at the core of the Russian hybrid war against Ukraine. So we thought we’ll just continue doing our job, as small and unimportant it may seem to be.”

However, on the day of his exhibition, Bevza was forced to cancel the exhibition and seek shelter. 

The artist has since been creating anti-tank obstacles. In a post on Instagram Bevza shared that, “for the last 5 days [he] and @pidust.mark were helping local territorial defence to build Anti-tank obstacles or so-called ‘Hedgehogs’.

Ukrainian photographer and journalist Mstyslav Chernov has been sharing gut-wrenching photos of the crisis in Maripol. On Tuesday he shared a photo of “a piece of shrapnel stuck in [an] Ukrainian passport”. Chernov said the passport saved a 16-year-old boy’s life. 

An artist in Crimea, who goes by the alias Antik Danov, created a pop-up art installation across the region. The installation includes handwritten posters with messages from Crimea residents who have family and loved ones in Ukraine. He said, “I do them because I cannot afford not to. I have tried and wanted to step back from being creative, but I always come back to it eventually.”

One poster read, “I have a sister in Ukraine. Roman, 10 years old.”