Keynote Lecture: Ambicoloniality: Cultural Proximity, Agency, and the Afterlives of Empire – Svitlana Biedarieva

The keynote talk discusses ambicolonial theory, first introduced in Svitlana Biedarieva’s book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). The term ‘ambicoloniality’ provides a useful lens to understand the current situation in which Ukraine has become Russia's territory of neocolonial obsession, and Russia, in its desire to occupy Ukraine, has, in effect, subjected itself to Ukraine’s symbolic dominance. This concept – and the theoretical model built upon it – mark a significant departure from existing postcolonial and decolonial methodologies. Unlike many colonial empires of the past that exercised power from a distance, the Ukrainian and Russian relationship reflects centuries of mutual influence across a shared border. Drawing on this new interdisciplinary approach, informed by art history, the talk examines the cultural factors shaping Russia’s colonial expansion, Ukraine’s anti-colonial resistance, decolonial release and liberation, with a particular focus on the evolution of socially and politically engaged art practices since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the editor of Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives (ibidem Press, 2021), among others. Dr. Biedarieva is the General Editor of The Harvard History of Ukrainian Art forthcoming book series. She is the Founding Director of Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network. She has also been President of the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA). Dr. Biedarieva has published texts in leading academic journals and media outlets, such as October, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Financial Times, and The Art Newspaper. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.