Presented by GUNIA Project x Honchar Museum, the album features 130 sheets of photographs and sketches by the renowned Ukrainian artist Ivan Honchar. It's been over two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, beginning a war that has taken countless lives and devastated an entire country. Throughout this time, Ukrainians have also been fighting to reconnect with, and protect, their cultural heritage and sense of identity - something a new art album hopes to capture.
Titled 'Ukraine and Ukrainians', it features 130 pages of captivating sketches and photographs by Ukrainian artist, sculptor and ethnographer, Ivan Honchar. Born in 1911, Honchar harboured a lifelong fascination with Ukrainian folklore, visiting various villages around the country and collecting antiquities that he felt preserved a specific sense of native spirit. From the 1950s onwards, he began to store all these items in his cottage on Novonavodnytska Street in Kyiv, opening it up as a residential museum that would later become the basis for the Ivan Honchar Museum National Centre of Folk Culture.
"[Honchar's] work throughout his life was preserved, not destroyed, not burned. And it exists now, today, and it's a miracle!" Anna Kuts, designer and art director of the album, said in a statement. "In my opinion, it is important to raise all archives, all possible materials that will once again remind us who Ukrainians are, how we were formed, and answer the question "How will we be formed in the future?".
The latter is.