A participatory project exploring contemporary Ukrainian art, war, memory, and displacement
As part of Kuma International’s three-day public programme exploring artistic responses to war, memory, and displacement through perspectives emerging from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine, UNBOXING opens the programme with a participatory project by Ukrainian cultural worker, curator, and essayist Alona Karavai on Tuesday, July 8th, at 5 PM in Manifesto Gallery in Sarajevo.
Rather than presenting a traditional exhibition, UNBOXING invites audiences to collectively unpack a box containing artworks by ten contemporary Ukrainian artists. As each work emerges from the box, participants are invited to look closely, discuss it together, and take part in creating an improvised exhibition.
The session offers a different way of experiencing art—one based on conversation, shared interpretation, and collective curiosity. Instead of presenting a single narrative about Ukraine, UNBOXING brings together multiple artistic perspectives on war and its consequences, exploring memory, migration, loss, resilience, vulnerable landscapes, interrupted lives, and the everyday realities of living through prolonged crisis.
The participating artists work across installation, ceramics, photography, performance, textiles, video, sculpture, drawing, and socially engaged practice. While each follows a distinct artistic path, together they reflect on many of the questions shaping contemporary Ukraine today: how memories are carried, how places are transformed by conflict, and how art can create space for dialogue, care, and imagination.
The session features works by EtchingRoom1 (Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova), Sofia Holubeva, Nikolay Karabinovych, Anna Potiomkina, Ksenia Pohrebennyk, Valentyna Prytula, Situational Flowerbeds (Dasha Chechushkova, Anna Nikitiuk, and Ksenia Shcherbakova), Olesia Saiienko, Ruslan Tremba, and Leo Trotsenko.
About Alona Karavai
Alona Karavai (b. 1982) is a Ukrainian cultural worker, curator, and essayist. She co-founded the project space Asortymentna Kimnata, the residency house Khata-Maysternya, and the publishing project ilostmylibrary. After fleeing Donetsk in 2014, when her workplace, Izolyatsia, was seized and turned into an illegal prison, she focused on arts and community work. Since 2022, she has managed urgent art evacuations of non-museified art archives, residencies for displaced and combat-affected artists, and educational laboratories such as the School of Contemporary Art fra fra fra. A fellow of the first cohort of the Socially Engaged Arts programme and a laureate of the European cultural KAIROS Prize in 2023, she is based in Kyiv, where her work explores themes of peripheries, absence, as well as vitality and death. More recently, she has concentrated on facilitating Death Cafés and piloting arts and community formats around mortality as a way of enriching how we live.
About Kuma International’s Public Programme
UNBOXING is part of Kuma International’s three-day public programme hosted by Manifesto Gallery.
The programme continues on 9 July with a guided tour of the UNBOXING exhibition, shaped collectively during the programme’s first day, followed by a conversation between Alona Karavai, Adna Muslija, and Claudia Zini reflecting on artistic and curatorial practices in times of war.
On 10 July, the programme concludes with a listening session led by Claudia Zini and Velibor Božović, developed in partnership with Radio Elsewheres.
Everyone is welcome. Participation is free and no registration is required.
The programme is organised by Kuma International in partnership with Manifesto Gallery and realised with the support of Asortymentna Kimnata and Socially Engaged Arts.
