In the Kyiv bookstore “Sense on Khreshchatyk,” as part of the 55th season of Ukrainian Fashion Week, an exhibition of contemporary jewelry about life during the war has opened. This is the first exhibition in Ukraine of political jewelry about life and creativity during wartime called “Brave to Live.” This exhibition project by the LANKA jewelry community introduces viewers to the works of Ukrainian artists such as Anna Avits, Olga Vinogradova, Anastasia Gulak, Oksana Zhevska, Inessa Kovalova, Olga Komisarova, Maia Kotelnitskaya, Vitaliy Kokhan, Vitaliy Krokhmaliuk, Olena Levder, Vadym Lohvynenko, Denys Muzyka, Olena Osadcha, Elizaveta Portnova, Olga Radionova, Hanna Slizkova, and Tatyana Chorna. All of them present reflections of jewelry artists on the challenges of today: living and creating during the war, the resilience and courage of the Ukrainian people in wartime conditions, expressed through the language of contemporary jewelry.

According to the exhibition organizers, we are at a stage where this genre in Ukraine is just taking its first steps, forming its unique features. However, it is to this genre that artists have turned, responding to social events and creating works that go beyond the traditional understanding of beauty or self-adornment. The works selected for the “Brave To Live” exhibition are examples of how jewelry art can become an active participant in public dialogue, inviting reflection regardless of the viewer’s context and the language they use. For instance, Olga Komisarova’s work “Pain” attempts to convey without words the suffering a person feels at the epicenter of war. When words cannot express the pain, it can only be reflected and recreated in colors and textures, to at least become somewhat tangible.

The first two editions of the project in Munich and Lisbon were intended to remind foreign audiences of the war in Ukraine and build individual emotional connections between the viewer’s consciousness, which exists in the context of the basic safety of their familiar and comprehensible world, and the experience that a person gains when their native country is engulfed in the flames of the largest war on the European continent since World War II. The third, “home” edition of “Brave To Live,” which will last until September 4, with the support of Sense Bank, aims to introduce Ukrainians more closely to the genre of contemporary jewelry in general and in detail to the jewelers who turn to this genre in their work, creating exemplary contemporary political jewelry that manages to draw attention to the war in Ukraine and prove that even small objects can have great diplomatic power.