Viktoria Bavykina is a curator, art critic, and sociologist of culture. She works with photography, political art, and feminist optics in artistic practices. She was a curator of the Grynyov Art Collection and art director of the AKT art space in Kyiv, Ukraine. She co-curated the exhibitions Open Opportunity at M17 Contemporary Art Centre (2021, Kyiv), Volyazlovsky and All His Creative Life at YermilovCentre (2021, Kharkiv), Instant Time at the Mystetskyi Arsenal (2018, Kyiv). She was a curator of the Kharkiv Photo Forum — an international photography conference. In 2020, Bavykina defended her PhD in sociology of culture at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. She is a student at the University of Liverpool, pursuing an MA in Art, Philosophy, and Cultural Institutions under the UK Government’s Chevening Scholarship programme.
Max Gorbatskyi is a curator at Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool, UK). Previously, he was a curator at the Department of Contemporary Art at the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv, Ukraine), where he led the photography direction and, among other projects, co-curated a large-scale photography exhibition ‘Sensitivity. Contemporary Ukrainian Photography’. Gorbatskyi’s long-time focus has been on contemporary photography and private photo archives. He is a recipient of the UK Government’s Chevening Scholarship. He holds an MA in History of Photography at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an MA in Cultural Management at the University of Bologna.
Andrii Dostliev is an artist, curator, and photography researcher. His primary areas of interest are collective trauma, the history of queerness in Ukraine, decolonial practices in Eastern Europe, and the limits of photography as a medium. His art practice encompasses photography, video, performance, and installation. Dostliev has published several photobooks. He exhibited his works at the Odesa National Art Museum (Odesa, Ukraine), Ludwig Museum (Budapest, Hungary), National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, Lithuania), Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, the Netherlands), and others.
Lia Dostlieva is an artist, cultural anthropologist and essayist. Her art and research practice engage with the issues of collective trauma, decolonial stories seen through multispecies entanglements, and agency and visibility of vulnerable groups. Dostlieva exhibited her works at the Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Kolumba Museum (Cologne, Germany), Ludwig Museum (Budapest, Hungary), National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, Lithuania), Tbilisi Photography and Multimedia Museum (Tbilisi, Sakartvelo), Nationзal Museum of Fine Arts (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan), Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), and others.
Katya Buchatska is an artist based in Kyiv. In her practice, she shapes a new ontology through personal experience, often employing irony and the tactic of ‘soft’ intervention in various environments such as galleries, museums, or natural spaces. She actively participates in the initiative group dedicated to preserving the photographic legacy of the Hutsul artist Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit. Since 2016, she has been working with neurodivergent persons in the inclusive art studio Workshop of Possibilities located in Kyiv. Her works have been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (Germany), Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany), Art & History Museum (Brussels, Belgium), Albertinum (Dresden, Germany), Museum de Fundatie (Zwolle, the Netherlands), and MUSA Museo de las Artes Universidad de Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Mexico). Recent personal projects include Izyum to Liverpool at the Liverpool Cathedral (Liverpool, 2023), You Will See This Light On The Sunniest Day at the hunt kastner gallery (Prague, 2023), and A Very Personal Show at The Naked Room (Kyiv, 2020).
Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi are Kharkiv artists who explore historical contexts and landscapes of the industrial regions of Ukraine using installations, reenactment, video, and archives. They were shortlisted for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2018, 2020, and 2022 and received the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2020 Public Choice Award for the Hooligans project. In 2022, their film Labor Safety in the Region of Dnipropetrovsk was shown at the 33rd Marseille International Film Festival. In 2022, Revkovskyi and Rachynskyi received the main award at the Allegro Prize, Poland’s largest international competition for visual artists. Recent personal exhibitions include Mickey Mouse’s Steppe at the Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, 2023), Tailings Dam at the PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv, 2021), Premonition of Disaster at the Detenpyla Gallery (Lviv, 2020), War of Inscriptions at the Off/Format Gallery (Brno, 2019), Finally We Are Here at the Miejski Osrodek Sztuki (Gorzow Wielkopolski, 2019), and Soot at the Artsvit Gallery (Dnipro, 2018).
Oleksandr Burlaka is an architect and artist working with photography, research, and installation. He explores the history, architecture, urban planning, and their transformations in Ukraine. His focus is on spatial design. Burlaka graduated from the Kyiv University of Construction and Architecture with a master’s degree in architecture in 2005. He was nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2013 and 2015 as part of the Objects Group and the Melnychuk-Burlaka group. Burlaka has been the architect for numerous exhibitions at the Mystetskyi Arsenal, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Dovzhenko Centre, PinchukArtCentre, and projects for the Kyiv Biennale. Burlaka is a scholarship recipient of the Junge Akademie der Künste Berlin.
Olena Kasperovych, Producer of the Pavilion.
Olena is a curator and manager of art projects. She curated international art residencies and education projects at YermilovCentre (Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 2017–2021; exhibition Dialogues at the Bluecoat Art Centre (part of EuroFestival, a parallel programme of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest, Liverpool, UK); Navigation, a series of exhibitions of the integration programme for relocated artists at the Jam Factory Art Center (Lviv, Ukraine) in 2022–2023; and exhibition Deep Deep Forest in the framework of the Pixxelpoint festival in Nova Gorica in Slovenia in 2021. Olena received the Gaude Polonia scholarship for young artists and curators from the Ministry of Culture of Poland in 2020. She participated in the curatorial research residency Odyssée Programme from the Ministry of Culture of France in 2019. Olena was a SWAP: UK/Ukraine resident at the Liverpool Biennial in 2018 and interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2015.
Misha Buksha, Head of Visual Communications.
Misha is an artist, graphic designer, and art director. He mainly works with exhibition and book projects. He is the co-founder and creative director of BOOKSHA publishing house. Buksha is the co-author (along with Yaroslav Solop) and art director of UPHA Made in Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian photography. He holds a bachelor’s degree in book graphics from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture of Ukraine. He is pursuing a master’s degree in Digital Communication Environments at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW.
Lisa Korneichuk, Head of Communications.
Lisa is an art journalist, editor, and art researcher. She explores the impact and reflection of political processes in contemporary art. In 2016, she co-founded VONO, a media outlet focused on Ukrainian contemporary art. She has been a communications manager for commercial and non-profit cultural projects, including the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Her writings have been published in artnet, Hyperallergic, Chicago Reader, Dwutygodnik, Suspilne.Kultura, ArtsLooker, and others. She graduated from the New Arts Journalism programme at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she was a Fulbright Fellow.
Uliana Sukach-Kochetkova, Graphic Designer.
Uliana is a graphic designer working in various fields such as branding, social media content design, book typography and illustration. She holds a BA in Visual Communications at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. She also holds a second bachelor's degree in Graphic Design at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. She is pursuing her master’s degree in Digital Communication Environments at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW.
Yuliana Chorna, Social Media Manager.
Yuliana is a communications and SMM manager. Has experience in organising the student charity auction of documentary photography Fixation'30; volunteering in various cultural projects: The Congress of Culture in Lviv (2019), an intern at the department of the Territory of Terror Museum (Lviv, 2019), assistance in organising exhibitions and developing of the communication strategy of the Na Poshti Gallery (Ternopil, 2020), and guest coordinator at the UA: Radio Culture station (Lviv, 2021). Since 2022, she has worked at Jam Factory Art Center as an assistant for the Navigation program and a mediator of the program's final exhibition. Since 2023, she has joined the art centre's communications department as a junior communications manager.