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Oleksandr Antoniuk
The city appears not as a specific point on the geographical map, but as a vulnerable carrier of collective memory, a living space for people that exists under the constant threat of Russian aerial attacks.
Topographical structures and conditional landscapes form the visual image of a Ukrainian city. The works engage with the phenomenon of collective memory, which is already being formed in the conditions of war.
Every Ukrainian is familiar with the experience of nightly terrorizing attacks, when entire clouds of drones and missiles move toward our homes with the intention of destroying us as a nation. This is a shared, repetitive experience known to all Ukrainians.
This experience cannot be materially grasped or fully archived. It has no stable carrier, yet it exists on a mental level—as a bodily reaction, as memory that activates automatically. The sound of a Shahed drone becomes a trigger that connects individual memories into a single field of collective experience.
Visual images, video, or sound do not illustrate a specific event; rather, they activate previously lived experiences that unite us.
This shared experience becomes the foundation for a new stage in the formation of the Ukrainian nation—not as an abstract idea, but as a community united by lived, understood, and indestructible collective experience.
At the same time, this collective memory cannot be physically destroyed. Despite Russia’s attempts to erase our cities, landscapes, and human lives from the face of the earth, no drone or missile can affect the shared mental space in which the experience of resistance and solidarity is preserved.
Oleksandr Antoniuk is an artist and PhD researcher.
He was born on March 21, 1994, in Dnipro, Ukraine.
In his artistic practice, he combines different techniques and media, experimenting to create metaphorical images—non-obvious, multilayered, and complex. Rather than depicting the world directly, he searches for visual forms that can communicate through the language of symbols and imagery.
Currently, the central theme of his research and artistic work is war. He is developing a project dedicated to Ukrainian cities that are being destroyed daily by Russia. In this project, he explores questions of memory and possible ways of overcoming the trauma of war through the artistic reinterpretation of ruined cities.
Antoniuk believes that art can capture emotions and lived experiences that cannot be contained in words and can become a space for collective healing.
Education
2008–2012 — Dnipropetrovsk Theatre and Art College, Department of Painting
2012–2018 — National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Easel Painting Studio of Prof. Valerii Huryn
Since 2024 — PhD candidate (Doctor of Arts), National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture
Membership
Since 2017 — Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine
Awards
2025 — Third Prize, All-Ukrainian 10th Painting Triennial
2024 — First Prize in the Printmaking category, 12th Exhibition-Competition named after Heorhii Yakutovych
2020 — Laureate of the Kyiv City State Administration Award for Special Achievements in the Development of the Hero City of Kyiv (Creative Achievements nomination)
2019 — Laureate of the Presidential Scholarship for Young Artists of Ukraine
2014 — Viktor Shatalin Prize
Solo Exhibitions
2019 — “Trace of Presence”, 11 Portal Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2016 — “The Sky Does Not Sleep”, Educatorium Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2016 — “Co-involvement”, Museum of Ukrainian Painting, Dnipro, Ukraine
Participates in international and all-Ukrainian exhibitions, plein-airs, and residencies since 2009.
