During the year of its existence, the UART online platform for Ukrainian artists held 15 exhibitions in the USA and Europe

Now it unites about 50 Ukrainian artists. Andy Verdi, CEO, founder of the online platform United Ukrainian Unleashed ART, told about this during a briefing at Media Center Ukraine – Odesa. 

“During the war, artists had more opportunities to reveal themselves and show their art, not only in Ukraine. The idea to create such an online platform to promote the creativity of Ukrainian artists came to us in March 2022, when we were sitting in a bomb shelter in Odesa. And now about 50 artists from all over Ukraine have joined us. We have held 15 exhibitions – online and in real life, in the USA and Europe,” – Andy Verdi said.

As the co-founder of the project, Helen Labartkava-Verdi, noted, she and Andy Verdi were not involved in art before the war started.

“But when we saw that the war was going to destroy Ukraine, we started this project. Ukrainian art experiences everything that our country experiences. The main thing that our country has achieved now is that people in the world know that Ukraine is Ukraine, not a part of russia. The same thing is happening with Ukrainian art. It’s becoming recognizable,” – Helen Labartkava-Verdi said.

She added that, for example, leading British newspapers wrote about the Ukrainian artist Dmytro Kryshovsky, the author of a painting dedicated to the sunken cruiser “Moskva”.

However, as Andy Verdi pointed out, not all projects can be implemented. Not all the projects find a response in Europe.

“So this happened to us with the exhibition about Bucha. We selected exhibits, but everywhere we got rejected.  It was sensitive content. Although it was not photographs. That’s why we made an online exhibition. And it came out as a manifesto – there is no sensitive content. The world has to see this,” Andriy Verdi said.

As Helen Labartkava-Verdi added, based on her experience, “they sympathize with us, but they don’t want to see a real war. The world is not ready for it.”

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news