Cultural Practice in the Ukrainian Diaspora

Ukrainian-American artist Maya Hayuk weaves visual information from her immediate surroundings into elaborate, painterly abstractions, thus creating an engaging mix of referents from popular culture and advanced painting practices alike. Her large-scale, improvised murals speak to the artist’s obsession with symmetry, “perfect imperfection” and outer/ inner space. Hayuk’s work has been the subject of one person exhibitions and commissions at venues including FRAC Museum in Dunkerque, FR (2019), The Ukrainian Museum New York (2017), The Bowery Wall, NY (2014), The Hammer Museum, LA (2013), and a forthcoming commission with the Brooklyn Museum. Hayuk has been teaching this past semester in MIT’s Masters of Architecture Program.

Artist and activist Betty Roytburd (b.1989, Odesa, Ukraine) lives and works in New York City. Her sculptural installations, videos, and writing have been featured in publications such as Arcadia Missa’s How to Sleep Faster, as well as in group and solo exhibitions at CSRA, Jack Hanley, Alyssa Davis, Good Enough ATL, 15 Orient, Gern en Regalia and Kimberly Klark galleries. Her work reflects on the decomposition of memory and the weaponization of nostalgia. She is the co-founder of SPILKA NGO and is currently in pursuit of an MSW at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College.

A first generation Ukrainian American, Adriana Farmiga is an interdisciplinary artist and Associate Dean at the Cooper Union School of Art in NY, whose practice extends into spaces of: education, curating, and community advocacy. Farmiga received an MFA from Bard College in 2004, and has shown in group and solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Artforum, among other publications, and ranges from conceptual still life to video and mixed media sculpture.