M HKA Ensembles

Digital image

The main campaign image of ‘Imagine Ukraine’ was proposed by Nikolay Karabinovych. It is a continuation of a digital image the artist conceived in 2018. The circle with its two colourful arrows was at that point encircling the word ‘Revolution’. Now it encircles the question of the project, articulated typographically, with ‘Ukraine’ as a sturdy presence and imagination evoked as a playful, joyful capacity.

After the Maidan Revolution, the national colours yellow and blue became more present in public space, which they hadn’t been before. The artist at that moment used them from time to time, not for immediate political reasons but to deconstruct them on the level of colours, as an open-ended reflection.

In the context now the circling continues its visual challenge in changed circumstances, focussing on a notion that is an open one yet also one that clearly exists, both as a past and as a future aspiration. The encircling defines and contextualises the notion but not as a border, as an ongoing possibility of focus.