Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This study presents an interdisciplinary analysis of cultural testimonies of the unique wound left by the camps in Ukrainian-Russian relations. Gulag literature, explored for decades by the humanities, is perceived mainly through the prism of the heritage of totalitarian systems and creative attitudes in the face of suffering: extreme physical and mental experience. The paper analyzes the works of Ukrainian artists of the last decades created as a result of imprisonment. Their literary and film creations make up the image of a wound inflicted in the name of achieving imperial goals while imprisoned in a camp. The juxtaposition of their diverse artistic reactions to the suffering of testimonies helps to highlight the power with which the unsettled, forgotten, silenced, and now and unexpectedly updated wound of the camp past is reflected in today’s attitude of Ukrainians towards Russians.

Presenters

Kinga Anna Gajda
Adjunct, Institute of European Studies, Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University, Malopolskie, Poland