Artist Vitalii Kravets: "The war gave me a tremendous sense of responsibility."

In the third episode of the UFDA podcast, artist Vitalii Kravets discussed his journey in art, his family's influence on his creativity, and the profound changes that the full-scale war brought to his work.

Vitalii is often referred to as a non-confessional artist, and he doesn't dispute this definition. The artist admits that it's hard for him to focus on just one thing — art offers too many temptations. Sometimes, it might seem like he creates unrelated works, but for the author himself, all these directions are equally fascinating.

Vitalii comes from an artistic family — his father is a well-known illustrator. However, the artist says he didn't have much choice. In childhood, his parents tried to make him a lawyer or a doctor, but unsuccessfully — the boy was expelled from all the schools he attended. The Kyiv Art School became his sixth school, through which he returned to the artistic path.

The artistic environment from childhood undoubtedly influenced the formation of the future artist. But at the same time, it created certain pressure. Vitalii compares his parents to "two dinosaurs" who set a high bar that he must push off as a starting point. It's a difficult life when you constantly feel like a "little dinosaur" who needs to reach a certain level.

The full-scale war radically changed Vitalii's approach to creativity.

"It's a tremendous sense of responsibility — you understand that you're already in the same boat with everyone. You bear great responsibility. I feel this very strongly. Every single day, I think a lot about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. How necessary and important it is. How it might strategically play out or come back in the future," the artist explains.

Paradoxically, the war made the artist more productive. In three war years, he realized far more projects than before, although he had less energy due to constant mental and physical fatigue. During this period, he created three theatrical productions (though he had never worked in theater before) and held three major solo exhibitions.

Vitalii's most famous series, "Anatomy of Spineless," was born in Lviv during the first months of the war. The artist sent his family to France while he remained in the overcrowded and frightened city, where missiles reached wherever they wanted, and people sat in basements for 10 hours at a time.

"I decided for myself that to make it easier to survive, I needed to do something. And I created this system: from the beginning to the end of the air raid, I worked. Like from bell to bell," the artist recounts. The air raids were chaotic — they could last five minutes at four in the morning or drag on for the entire night, or even for half a day, in torn fragments. "I bought some standard drawing paper at a stationery store, a jar of ink, found a pile of yellowed old newspapers in that apartment, a jar of glue, some old brushes, and a pack of charcoal. I assembled this fundamental set of tools and materials and began this series as work on my fears."

The artist depicted archetypes of the aggression of the so-called "Russian world" that came to Ukraine. When he began posting the works on social media, Leonid Komsky from the "Educat" art foundation reached out to him. Together, they organized one of the first exhibitions in newly liberated Kyiv in June 2022.

The project continued to develop. Philosophers Vakhtan Kebuladze and Volodymyr Yarmolenko collaborated with it, making their first appearance in video format with their podcast at this very exhibition. Later, the band Dakh Daughters used images from the series in their animation for the song "Apocalypse," which allowed the project to "travel" the world with the musicians' tours.

The final point of the project became an art book published by the "Komu Book" publishing house. Vitalii united with like-minded people — Andriy Bondar and Oleg Saman, who also engage in what the artist calls "aesthetic Russophobia." The book features a charitable component, with an automatic donation included with each copy.

Part of the series was digitized by UFDA as part of the general effort to preserve Ukrainian art. At that time, there was active discussion about the need to digitize museum collections after the destruction of the Prymaсhenko Museum and the theft of artworks in the east of the country.

Besides creativity, Vitalii is actively involved in volunteering. According to him, many volunteer projects have been completed, including numerous auctions, donations from all sales, and separate charitable initiatives. However, he considers the "Sandwich with Porridge" project the most striking.

"I invented and initiated the New Year's art-sale party 'Sandwich with Porridge.' The caption inspired the name under a photo by Evgen Korshunov, who is currently serving in the military. The photo showed exactly that: a slice of bread with some porridge piled on top. This is ordinary army surrealism. It seemed to me that before New Year, such a sandwich is more relevant in our lives than canapés with caviar," the artist explains.

This was a party that reunited artists, like a New Year miracle. The artist wanted to create an exhibition centered around a literal Christmas tree, where artists created and sold their objects directly from the tree. For this, he found the most enormous Christmas tree and placed it in Kyiv's smallest space — in Polina Verbytska's studio. There, you can find diverse, accessible art from famous artists.

Evgen Korshunov himself was also present, showcasing his works. The artist printed 50 postcards featuring the same sandwich, and Korshunov individually and very poetically painted each one, sending them back to Kyiv.

"Everything sold out instantly — gallery owners and collectors literally 'undressed' the tree. We collected three times more money than planned, and 100% of sales went to fundraising. And the atmosphere was wonderful overall — so maybe we'll repeat it."

For the artist, what's important in volunteering is closeness to the people it's done for: "Just donating somewhere doesn't satisfy me emotionally. I want to feel that I'm truly making a difference. That's why my friends and I do a lot with our own hands: cars, repairs, painting, assembling..."

At the same time, Vitalii categorically rejects comparisons between cultural struggle and real war:

"Like all normal people, I categorically don't accept comparisons between cultural struggle and real war. All these phrases, like 'cultural front,' are inappropriate. In my opinion, the problem here lies in the confusion between the importance of culture in war and the price paid by the military. These are completely different things."

The war prompted a reevaluation of fundamental concepts in visual art. In the project "Kraievyd" (later renamed "Crying"), Vitalii explores how the landscape genre is changing. Consuming content from Telegram channels where drones film Ukrainian land from above, viewers see how it transforms into abstract images through shelling and heavy equipment.

Such land loses its familiar horizon when viewed from an inhuman perspective. We don't recognize our land; we lose the features that the eye usually catches onto. But does it still qualify as a landscape? — The artist poses the question.

The project is conceived as a long-term observation process and already includes over 50 works. Vitalii hopes to document within its framework the end of the war and the restoration of the land, the return of familiar perspectives and horizons. He has clearly defined his dream location for a future exhibition of the complete cycle — Koktebel.

The artist's most provocative work became the "Nature Morte - Mixed Media" series, created from appliqués of Russian military uniforms. The uniforms were provided by soldiers who stripped them of captured Russians during the liberation of the Kherson region. Vitalii created a composition resembling a fragment of the earth's surface with the enemy body's remains trampled into it.

The artist notes that modern Ukrainians consume a lot of such content from the internet and even derive a certain satisfaction from it, which is natural — the enemy's death means preserving our lives. However, his work is deliberately brutal, intended to prompt people to consider this ethical dilemma.

Regarding the research character of his work, the artist notes:

"In my opinion, Anatomy is not a research project. It's rather a reaction. If it researches anything, it's the shock of the first days of war. Now, I couldn't and wouldn't want to do something similar; the value of this project is precisely in its reactivity and emotionality. Research things started later."

Despite studying scenography at the academy, Vitalii had never worked in theater before, preferring cinema. Everything changed when Irma Vitovska approached him with a proposal to work on the production "The Kaydash Family" based on Nechuy-Levytsky in Ivano-Frankivsk.

The theater is experiencing a real boom, with constant sold-out shows, and the management has decided to experiment by inviting artists who aren't typically theatrical but could bring freshness. Vitalii based his scenography on the central conflict of the play — a pear tree that grows on one plot while its fruit falls on another, causing eternal quarrels.

The artist proposed creating decorations in the form of allegorical pears — giant, five-meter-long leather boxing pears, but deformed. The entire city collected the material — Frankivsk residents brought old jackets and coats from their closets, turning the project into a social action.

Following the success of this production, two additional works were created: Irma Vitovska's one-woman show, "Kyiv Perepichka," for which Vitalii developed a video installation featuring hand-drawn animation, and a production with Oleksiy Gladushevsky at the Veterans Theater.

Besides creative activity, Vitalii completed the KAMI course — a program about history, art, and memory created by the Museum of Contemporary Art based at KAMA. The six-month intensive course was dedicated to memorialization practices — a topic that, in the artist's opinion, Ukrainians will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.

The existing memorialization tradition is Soviet heritage with totalitarian and forced rituals that don't suit modern Ukraine. Creating a new culture of memory requires mastering a range of new skills and knowledge.

Vitalii came to the course with his project and brought it to completion, even receiving financial support at the graduation event. However, he keeps the project details secret for now.

When asked about destroying his works, Vitalii responds calmly — it's a regular part of the work, not a dramatic situation. His technique excludes preparatory sketches; he works directly on the final canvas. Under each work that viewers see, about 15 others are "buried," which the artist ruthlessly destroys in the process.

To young artists who can't part with their works even when they feel dissatisfied with them, Vitalii advises against clinging to every piece. When works accumulate to a critical mass, this problem will resolve itself. An artist experiences many periods and creates works as testimonies to these stages, which can be cherished and remembered but can also be crossed out and replaced by new ones.

At the same time, he admits that he sometimes regrets destroying student works — portraits of friends, self-portraits, and academic pieces. Now that he has essentially become an abstract artist, it would be interesting for him to revisit those works and recall the skills he developed during that time.

Regarding plans for the coming years, the artist jokes:

"Creative plans — my favorite! I want to finish what I started. For example, the 'Crying' series aims to document the end of the war. If we're talking about creative goals, that's the most important! Just kidding. There are several big ideas — as always, a swan, crab, and pike inside me, but what can you do?  Billy Milligan somehow lived — so I can too!"

The entire conversation can be heard on the UFDA Podcast, and Vitalii Kravets' works can be viewed on the UFDA platform, where they are digitized and preserved.