After hiding for several days in the basement of a kindergarten in Bucha, a Kiev suburb that has become synonymous with Russian war crimes, Oksana Semenik had time to think.
Outside, Russian troops were sweeping through the town, killing civilians on the streets. Knowing that she might not understand, she turned to Ms. Art, an art historian. Semenik said she had wanted to write for a long time, but she was now troubled by Ukrainian works of art that were in danger of disappearing.
When she was hiding in Bucha, it was the early days of the Russian invasion, but two years ago she had already seen reports of the museum being destroyed. Her precious folk paintings by her favorite painter Maria Primachenko went up in flames. She realized that Moscow was waging war on Ukrainian culture.
“They are destroying works of art. They are destroying museums. “They are destroying buildings.” Mr. Semenik recalled what he thought in the basement. She vowed that if she escaped from Bucha, she would not allow Ukrainian art to fall into oblivion. “It was like, ‘There’s a war. You can die at any time. We must not postpone all this research any longer.’”
Since then, Semenik, 26, has been working to fulfill that pledge.
After escaping Bucha on foot, “Ukrainian art history,” with her English account on the social platform Her posts, which often exceed 100,000 views, have become a valuable resource for learning about Ukrainian art.
But perhaps an even more important achievement was her work in pressuring world-class museums to rethink their classification.
Mr. Semenik used his online popularity to get his foot in the door. He lobbied to have art long considered Russian (because the works date from the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union) to be reclassified as Ukrainian art.
She calls her efforts “decolonization of Ukrainian art.”
Thanks to her and other activists, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art have rechristened many of the artworks and artists, revising decades of practices that critics say conflated Ukraine's culture with that of its former Russian rulers.
As Russia seeks to erase Ukrainian identity by making art its primary target, Mr. Semenik's work has played a crucial role in raising awareness of the country's cultural heritage at a critical time, art world figures say. novel.
“Russia says: ‘Hey, show us your culture. You have nothing. Ukraine is not a country,” Mr. Semenik said in a recent interview. “That’s what I’m fighting against.”
Ms. Semenik, an introverted woman with red hair, still remembers the day she first read about the Ukrainian roots of Kazimir Malevich, a Kiev-born painter and important pioneer of abstract art. Malevich has long been described as Russian, but in his diaries he identified himself as Ukrainian.
“Really, is that true?” She recalled that while thinking about her own discoveries around 2016, she became interested in Ukrainian art.
After working as a cultural journalist for several years, Mr. Semenik enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts degree program at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv in 2021. She completed her master's thesis on representations of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukrainian art. , last year.
She opened her X account in June 2022, highlighting a Ukrainian artist who had been misidentified as Russian. These included avant-garde artists. Oleksandra ExeterThere's the 19th-century painter Ilya Repin, and of course Malevich.
Many people shared a common story. They were born, lived and worked in Ukraine. And they were oppressed, exiled, and murdered by Russia. But Moscow's long efforts to make Ukrainian culture part of Russia's heritage made the world remember them as Russians.
Mr. Semenik wants to debunk such myths “by writing about Ukrainian artists who were ‘stolen’ by the Russians.” wrote Soon after starting her account.
Oleksandra Kovalchuk, deputy director of the Odessa Art Museum, said Semenik's efforts were “really important to show that Ukraine has a long history and to counter Moscow's claims that Ukraine has always been part of Russia.” “Art is the proof.”
But Mr. Semenik knew that this story had been around for a long time and was deeply embedded in arts institutions. So when she was offered a fellowship at Rutgers University in the fall of 2022, she decided to spend part of it studying collections in Western museums and tracking down what she thought were mistakes in the labeling of Ukrainian art.
She started at the Zimmerli Art Museum, part of Rutgers University and home to the world's largest collection of Soviet nonconformist art, works created outside the official state system and a collection that favors the Socialist Realist style. . She spent weeks researching the artists' birthplaces and workshops.
“Oksana came in and saw the pieces marked Russian and she said, ‘They’re Ukrainian!’” recalled Zimmerli’s director, Maura Reilly. “So we said, ‘Yes, fix it!’ “She has done an amazing job.”
Mr. Semenik then turned his attention to other museums. What she discovered left her in shock.
Modern Art Museum. Met. Jewish Museum. According to reports she compiled, each of her works contained dozens of mislabeled pieces of Ukrainian art.
Mr. Semenik emailed the museum with a spreadsheet detailing information about the incorrectly described artists, urging them to correct the label. Her museum's response to her was often informal, which upset her.
In an email to the Brooklyn Museum, she pointed out that Repin's landscape painting, set in what is now Ukraine, is a “Russian winter scene.”
“It’s like giving the name ‘British Landscape’ to a painting set in India during the British colonial era.” There was anger in her voice.
Several museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, said in written comments that they were reviewing labels, but the task was complicated by overlapping identities for some artists. Malevich, for example, was born in Ukraine to Polish parents and lived in Russia for many years.
Mr. Semenik said that while he was “not trying to erase all other identities and just call these artists Ukrainian,” the Russia-only label made Russia complicit in the appropriation of Ukrainian culture.
Ultimately, Mr. Semenik decided to publicly address the museum through social media. Her post was widely shared online as a type of defamatory work. Other Ukrainian activists have also ordered Western museums to review their collections. It wasn't long before Mr. Semenik noticed a change in the museum's labels.
“I have good news.” she wrote Early last year, while sheltering in Kiev during the Russian air raids in X: The Metropolitan recognized Repin as a Ukrainian.
The Brooklyn Museum removed the label identifying him as Russian and instead listed his birthplace as present-day Ukraine. Other institutions have also seen changes, including the National Gallery in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
“Without Oksana’s efforts, it certainly would have taken longer,” said Ms. A, who helped push for the Met’s label change. Kovalchuk said.
Semenik said he sometimes begins art discussions with the question, “Why don’t you know Ukrainian artists?”
“Maybe one day you won’t have to ask that question.” she said