On Art and the Periphery: Join INDEX's curatorial tour of Ivan Hubenko’s painting exhibition

About the curatorial tour

The man in a flat cap is, in his own way, an archetypal character of Ukraine's industrial cities. In Ivan Hubenko's paintings, he dissolves into his surroundings, merging with street elements and plants. The city and its characters complement one another.

Ivan was born and raised in Kryvyi Rih, where he crystallised his style, which men in flat caps became an essential part of. Currently, the artist is serving in the National Guard of Ukraine as a rifleman. His creative output is now primarily limited to simple sketches in notebooks, capturing his military reality.

A selection of his paintings, along with the sketches, is on display through the end of February at INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange (33 Ivan Franko St). On 18 January, INDEX office manager Yuliia Kohut will lead a curatorial tour of Hubenko’s exhibition, “Tagebuch. Diary”. We will discuss the meaning and style of his works in detail, as well as the life and creative practice of an artist turned soldier.

Paintings and sketchbooks will be available for purchase during the tour to support Ivan Hubenko, a Ukrainian artist who has taken on positively non-artistic duties.

We look forward to seeing you on 18 January at 12 p.m. Address: 33 Ivan Franko St, 3rd floor. Free entry. The tour will be conducted in Ukrainian.

Find out more about the exhibition via the link.

‘On the Periphery’: A commentary on Ivan Hubenko’s work by Kateryna Yakovlenko, writer, researcher of visual culture and curator.

“Recently, I found myself in a conversation about masculinity: does masculinity equate to the concept of heroism? Tired and sensitive male friends around me testify that discussions of heroism — at least in the categories inherited from the Soviet era, which once structured critical discourse — are no longer possible. This conversation feels hopeless.

A father who spent his entire life working in the coal mines will likely have a very different understanding of heroes and heroism than those who once bestowed the title of ‘Heroes of Labour.’ Sometimes, giving one’s life to a repressive industrial machine is not heroism at all — it is another form of hopelessness.

Hopelessness is often described as a ‘dead end,’ a place from which there is no escape. Yet the periphery has no such ends. It seems to be everywhere at once, while you yourself are nowhere.

I used to find myself often engaged in conversations about the periphery. The absence of such conversations today does not mean that the periphery has disappeared. It remains present in every community, without exaggeration.

For many, however, the periphery is not a place distant from the centre. On the contrary, it becomes a center of gravity: the place where you were born, where you live and where you will most likely die — not because you are needed there, but because you are not needed anywhere else.

The men depicted in Ivan Hubenko’s paintings belong to this periphery. They will not leave it unless a powerful steppe wind tears them from the ground and carries them far, far away. The grey buildings — and greyness itself — remain nailed to the earth like ordinary dust.

Hubenko speaks of his heroes through the lens of everyday poetics, painting those who, if only momentarily, perceive the beauty of the periphery, because more often than not, this beauty lies on the periphery of their vision.

The grey houses, garages, bus stops and potholed roads in Hubenko’s paintings are infused with colour. The men — constantly surrounded by cold metal, coal, machinery and God knows what else — appear unexpectedly tender toward this inhospitable, mundane landscape, as if they have grown into it.

Someone becomes a concrete pillar; someone else becomes a poplar or a willow. Yet when I look at these trees, I recall Shevchenko’s poems, steeped in folk tradition and romanticism. In his verses, the wind bends the poplar to the ground, and it bends and howls. But the poplar in Hubenko’s painting does not bend. Grown into a human figure, it stands firm, as if uprooted.

One of the most frequently discussed topics about Ukraine in the West is resilience: the question of what allows Ukrainians, despite shelling, power cuts, economic hardship and constant political crises, to continue standing. The answer is complex, but one might imagine that people lean on poplar trees, and poplar trees lean on people.

Everyone presses their backs and shoulders against one another so that no one falls. This mutual support often goes unnoticed because it exists on the periphery of vision. On the periphery of geography, men and women do not ask for help; they are accustomed to carrying everything themselves — entire carts filled with personal struggles. In conversations about politics and war, they are becoming increasingly marginalised.

Where is the periphery in times of war? Here? Or there?

Hubenko is now serving in the army, and his new heroes are soldiers. These are no longer men rendered in picturesque images, but realistic sketches in notebooks. This shift reveals another layer of vulnerability, transforming the periphery into a space for reflecting on artistic practice and materiality during wartime.

With each passing year, this conversation grows more complex and, at times, increasingly marginalised. Where do you stand — as an artist, poet, man, human? I leave this as a rhetorical question.”

Translated by students of UKR 352, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Instructor: Svitlana Rogovyk