Warscapes/Ukraine Defiant — Series Statement
Warscapes/Ukraine Defiant is a body of work Elena Kalman produced during the first year of the war in Ukraine. The series premiered at the Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) in Minneapolis, March 3–July 15, 2023, and has since been shown at multiple institutions. These paintings respond to conflict through landscape rather than literal depictions of battle: they register loss, rupture, and resilience in the language of place.
Exhibition History
Museum of Russian Art (TMORA), Minneapolis — Ukraine Defiant, March 3–July 15, 2023
Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Peekskill, NY — Warscapes (selected works), 2024
Five Points Art Center, Torrington, CT — 2024
Unitarian Society, Stamford, CT — 2024
iO Art Center, Palisades, NY — March 14–30, 2026
Press and Interviews
Curator Masha Zavialova, PhD, commented on Kalman’s material choices and immediacy: “She used materials that she had at hand: fabric, wrapping paper, and even some plastic bags. That has the immediacy of that response to the war, expressed even in the technique.”
Selected coverage and interviews:
MPR News — Ukraine Defiant: A Russian art museum grapples with a Russian war.
KSTP — New Ukraine Defiant exhibit at Museum of Russian Art depicts first year of war.
Star Tribune — Two Minneapolis art exhibits coincide with the Russian‑Ukraine war’s one‑year anniversary.
New York Times — Article on TMORA and the Ukraine war.
(Links to these pieces are available on request or via the artist’s press page.)
About the Series
Although Kalman has lived in the United States for many years, the war in Ukraine remains central to her work. Ukraine Defiant is dedicated to the Ukrainian struggle and to the endurance of its people and landscape. Rather than depicting combatants or victims directly, the series uses empty, charged landscapes to set mood and narrative—following a tradition in which environment carries emotional and historical weight.
Many works in the series take their titles from a poem Kalman composed recently:
Ukraine invaded, bloodied, trampled and burned
Her fields are plowed with bombs and sown with bones
Her mothers weep, her sky is overcast
She dreams of the future, and she dreams of the past Her children torn away, uprooted, lost
She fights in spite of pain, in spite of cost
Her enemies predict defeat and doom
But she will win, will live again and bloom!
Sadness permeates these canvases, yet hope persists. The paintings register devastation—explosions, fire, storm—while also allowing for renewal and regeneration.
Materials, Technique, and Composition
Kalman’s surfaces are deliberately tactile and layered. She incorporates torn paper, fragments of older paintings, fabric, and even plastic bags to create texture and to evoke the detritus of conflict. Paint is often applied with a palette knife; brushwork is gestural and directional, reinforcing movement and urgency. Bold color and immediate mark‑making invite an instinctive response, while smaller, concealed details reward close looking.
Formally, the title painting Ukraine Defiant is square, but its circular composition guides the eye in a swirling motion—feathers and wings create diagonal tensions within the square. The other works in the series are elongated (approximately twice as long as they are tall) and organized along a diagonal axis that emphasizes motion and dislocation. Recurrent symbols—flowers, crosses, ravens, and fires—appear across the series as motifs of mourning, memory, and resistance.
Together, these choices—material, gesture, scale, and symbol—produce paintings that are at once immediate and contemplative: works of protest, elegy, and witness that ask viewers to hold grief and hope in the same field of vision.