CONTEMPORARY FEMALE ARTISTS OBSERVE THE CONFLICT AND DOCUMENT HISTORY FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW — FOR A CHANGE

by Edward M. Gómez

Women at War
an exhibition curated by Monika Fabijanska and presented in collabration with Voloshyn Gallery (Kyiv), featuring works by:
Dana Kavelina, Alena Grom, Oksana Chepelyk, Lesia Khomenko, Anna Scherbyna, Yevgenia Belorusets, Alevtina Kakhidze, Zhanna Kadyrova, Kateryna Yermolaeva, Olia Fedorova, and Alla Horska

Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery, New York NY 10002
Telephone: 646-345-9831
on view through August 26, 2022

A timely, important, and disturbing exhibition has opened at Fridman Gallery in New York — one that's worth dropping your tall glass of iced tea or iced latte and that annoying TikTok feed for and rushing over to see.

Wear shorts. A billowing summer frock. Flip-flops.

Dress comfortably, keep cool — and bring your rage.

At a very tense — for many urgent, understandable reasons — period in world history during what, for many people, in many places, are supposed to be the laid-back weeks of summer, Women at War, organized by the Polish-born curator Monika Fabijanska, is one of those presentations of contemporary art that manage, compellingly, to perfectly capture the emotional-psychological-spiritual mood of their times. For, now, the moment we are living through is one of unspeakable violence, destructiveness, and injustice in many parts of the world.

Women at War focuses on events in Ukraine, the large, eastern-European country (population: roughly 40 million) that was invaded and attacked by Russia, its neighbor to the east and northeast, starting in late February of this year. This assault followed Russia’s forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula — Ukrainian territory — in 2014.