Art Against Artillery: Voices of Resilience

Art against Artillery: Voices of Resilience by Olha Volynska explores the transformative power of art during times of war. The book highlights how Ukrainian artists use their creativity as a means of survival and resistance, preserving their national identity and culture amidst destruction. Through various narratives, the book showcases the resilience of artists who continue to create, perform, and inspire despite the ongoing conflict. It features stories from theatre directors, musicians, composers, curators, and other cultural figures who have turned their art into a vital tool for healing and resistance. The book is a testament to the enduring spirit of Ukrainian culture and its role in fostering unity and resilience.

Art against Artillery: Voices of Resilience av Olha Volynska utforsker kunstens transformative kraft i krigstid. Boken fremhever hvordan ukrainske kunstnere bruker sin kreativitet som et middel til overlevelse og motstand, og bevarer sin nasjonale identitet og kultur midt i ødeleggelsen. Gjennom ulike fortellinger viser boken motstandskraften til kunstnere som fortsetter å skape, opptre og inspirere til tross for den pågående konflikten. Den inneholder historier fra teaterdirektører, musikere, komponister, kuratorer og andre kulturpersonligheter som har gjort kunsten sin til et viktig verktøy for helbredelse og motstand. Boken er et vitnesbyrd om den utholdende ånden i ukrainsk kultur og dens rolle i å fremme enhet og motstandskraft.

As of spring 2025, the Ukrainian people still are engaged in a heroic struggle to preserve their land and democracy. Throughout three years of conflict, cultural institutions in Ukraine have played a crucial role in fostering identity, unity, and resilience.

Kilden Performing Arts Centre voiced its solidarity early on, together with fellow members of the Association of Norwegian Theatres and Orchestras (NTO).

This book has been created in collaboration between Ukrainian journalist Olha Volynska, Kilden Performing Arts Centre and the Association of Norwegian Theatres and Orchestras (NTO).

It is a powerful and poignant account from behind the scenes of the Ukrainian cultural landscape—a landscape shaped by an ongoing full-scale war. This work exemplifies commendable and vital journalism, featuring descriptions and eyewitness accounts that repeatedly engage the reader.

Dialogue is a key element for those of us who produce performing arts. This applies whether the art we present is expressed through words and movement or through music. Our dialogue exists both with the audiences that occasionally fill our halls and with the society and world in which we all coexist.

We are accustomed to the myriad emotions and sometimes practical challenges that emerge behind our stage curtains and which require creative responses and swift solutions. However, we have perhaps never gained insight into a backdrop characterised by such brutal and demanding realities as the one described by author and journalist Olha Volynska in this book.

Thus, we felt it essential to disseminate this timely, topical account from her and the many resilient cultural workers in Ukraine as swiftly as possible. It is an account filled with narratives that will surprise many.

From the bloody and brutal full-scale war inflicted upon Ukraine, artistic expression continues to flourish and evolve. This resilience emerges because individuals desire and need this expression to lead fulfilling lives a sentiment underscored by poignant and committed statements from cultural workers engaged in a daily battle against death, violence, torture, and dire material conditions.

Read this account and allow yourself to be moved.

Kristiansand/Oslo, Norway, March 2025

Harald Furre

CEO

Kilden Performing Arts Centre

Morten Gjelten

CEO

Association of Norwegian

Theatres and Orchestras

This book is about the rebirth and healing power of art

amidst the chaos, pain and destruction of war. Who could have imagined that, in the 21st century, one aggressive state would erase entire cities from the world map with impunity—along with homes, peaceful gardens, innocent lives, and people’s dreams?

It was clear from the very start: this war is about values, not territory —a battle between the defenders of those values and those who seek to destroy them, to erase the very essence of Ukrainian identity. The systematic destruction of Ukrainian culture has long been an integral part of Russian imperial policy—first under the empire, then the Soviet regime, and now evidenced by Russia’s full-scale war. With each new generation in Ukraine, people have suffered in one way or another, and this has imbued the country with a sense of defiance. And so it is no surprise that a cultural renaissance is unfolding in the midst of the war. Defying all logic, Ukraine is expe riencing a flourishing revival in literature, poetry, music, theatre and visual arts.

No longer merely an escape or an emotional refuge, art has become an act of defiance and a source of resilience in the darkest of times. Culture serves as a form of spiritual therapy, capable of healing wounds, helping to make sense of collective trauma and documenting the truth for future generations. If war brings death and destruction, art is a source of healing and revitalisation. It is, in short, a means of survival.

“Falsehood is no longer forgiven, especially in art,” says filmmaker Taras Tomenko. This resolute sincerity and purity of expression now define every sphere of Ukrainian culture, which continues to evolve despite daily threats. Theatres sell out, museums are packed and poets fill stadiums. “Coming to the theatre now feels like visiting a healing spring that leaves you transformed. This is how we preserve our identity and humanity,” says Oleksandr Knyha, the director of the Mykola Kulish Regional Musical and Drama Theatre in Kherson.

Even amid relentless shelling and daily loss of life, new bookstores are opening across Ukraine—not just as places to buy books,but as beacons of warmth, human connection, and resilience. The war meant to erase Ukrainian identity has instead become the catalyst for its rebirth. When Russia destroys Ukraine’s power stations, plunging the country in darkness, Ukrainians visit exhibitions with torches. As Russia’s missiles sow death, Kyiv composer Roman Hryhoriv picks up a fragment of one and plays music on it before world leaders: “Since the start of the full-scale war, we have been reborn as a society. Our culture is being revived. But our rebirth emerges from death.”

War helped us to find our resolve to no longer tolerate the erasure of our historical memory: the process of decolonisation has swept across the entire country. We are rediscovering vast layers of our own history and culture, and rejecting all that is imposed, artificial, or false. The colonial, imperial nature of this war is most evident in the targeted destruction of culture. “Without understanding this, one might think this was just a war over territory, as if two neighbouring countries were merely negotiating borders,” says former PEN Ukraine Executive Director Tetyana Teren.

Today, Ukrainians are fighting not only for their land but for their art, their museums, their monuments and their history. Since the start of the invasion, Russia has destroyed or damaged over 1300 cultural sites, looted more than 40 museums and stolen tens of thousands of priceless artefacts—cultural plundering on a scale unseen since World War II.

This book brings together the personal stories of Ukrainian artists—musicians, composers, painters, filmmakers, and theatre-makers— who demonstrate how art helps people endure the seemingly insurmountable. “It feels like you die every day,” says musician Marian Pyrih, “and are reborn each morning to soldier on.” A century ago, the Soviet totalitarian regime brutally destroyed Ukraine’s artistic and intellectual elite, known as the Executed Renaissance. Now as then, today’s Ukrainian writers, artists, and cultural figures face persecution, repression and extermination. But this time, they are not willing to await their fate and are choosing to fight the aggressor with weapons and words.

This book is also a tribute to the hundreds of Ukrainian artists who have lost their lives to this war. Among them, children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was executed simply because he refused to renounce his identity; conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko, who was murdered in occupied Kherson for refusing to conduct a propaganda concert; and writer Viktoria Amelina, whose life was cut short by a Russian missile. And yet, an artist lives as long as they are remembered.

And in times of war, memory becomes the greatest of treasures and the most powerful of weapons. Art, in documenting, reflecting, healing and infusing life with new meaning, preserves their memory. The task now is to prevent all that we have preserved at such great cost from being lost and forgotten.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the Kilden Performing Arts Centre and the Association of Norwegian Theatres and Orchestras, who were among the first to recognise how vital it is for Ukrainian artists performing during the war to be seen and heard by the world.

Olha Volynska, author