General Information
In the frame of a special project related to Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy the Martin Roth-Initiative set-up a six-months hybrid residency to empower Ukranian women artists in Ukraine. Through a residency with online workshops, discussions and expert meetings starting October 2024, an offline meet- up in Germany in March 2025, and a joint publication, the project promoted collaboration, intellectual search and dialogue, feminist discourse and artistic exploration.
Out of over 95 applicants, 20 participants of the residency were selected. They include visual artists, writers, film directors and theatre-makers, and hail from regions from across Ukraine. Working and thinking together promoted the creation of a supportive community of artists, that still continues meeting and keeping the discourse vivid.
Residency
The residency for Ukrainian women artists began in October 2024 with a set of online sessions and culminated in the in-person meeting in March 2025. Online events created space for intellectual inspiration and exchange, discussions and artistic search as well as empowerment. The program included lectures and workshops on feminist art theory, discussions on the in/ability to speak about the war and on the political nature of art as an archive of experiences, as well as workshops on self-realisation.
At the offline part, the group co-lived in Zeitz, near Leipzig, in Germany. The intensive programme included group reflections, workshops to strengthen resilience and self-awareness, artistic project discussions, and exchanges with cultural figures from Leipzig, where the participants were invited to by the City of Leipzig’s Office for International Affairs (Leipzig is sister city of Kyiv).
Throughout the residency participants were jointly looking for answers to challenging questions and developed new perspectives on their artistic self-conceptions as well as ideas for the collaboratively created publication.
Referees and moderators
BIPoC feminist Queer intersectional & political educator with focus on human rights, diversity, intersectionality and holistic wellbeing. Kholoud has over 23 years of experience working in NGOs, collectives and the private sector in the African continent, Global South and Europe. Their work areas include training & workshops, consultancy, mediation & supervision, leading organizational development processes, event organizing and group or one to one somatic therapy sessions & workshops.
Tutor of the residency, researcher, curator and artist from Kyiv, Ukraine. She got her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan. Her work addresses the topics of gender, labor, race, memory, and war. She curated exhibitions at the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv. She is a co-editor of the book “The Right to Truth. Conversations on Art and Feminism” (2019) and an editor of the upcoming book “Black Lives Matter Voices”. She is a co-curator of the Ukrainian chapter of the “Secondary Archive project”.
Ukrainian-Canadian artist born in Canada and currently based in Glasgow, Scotland. Ayla is interested in the sites of return, reclamation, and interstice that co-exist in diasporic cultural memory. In her practice, she uses autotheory and auto-ethnographical writing. Ayla had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the UK and Greece, and her works are part of the Saskatchewan Arts Board Permanent Collection and the National Gallery of Canada Archives & Collections.
artist, cultural anthropologist, essayist, b. in Donetsk, Ukraine. Participant of the 60th Venice Biennale. Her art and research practices engage with the issues of collective trauma, anthropocene, decolonial stories, and agency and visibility of vulnerable groups. As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, etc. Among the recent exhibitions there are “Heart of Earth” (Copenhagen, Denmark) and “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” (Tallinn, Estonia, with Andrii Dostliev).
is a contemporary art researcher, curator, and writer, Culture-Editor-in-Chief at Ukraine’s public broadcaster. Her publications include the book “Why There Are Great Women Artists in Ukrainian Art” and a special issue of Obieg Magazine on “Euphoria and Fatigue: Ukrainian Art and Society after 2014” (with Tatiana Kochubinska). She has curated exhibitions including "I dreamed of beasts" (Lublin, Poland, with Halyna Hleba), "Everyone is afraid of the baker, and I thank you" (apartment exhibition, Irpin, Ukraine, 2022), and "Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us" (Lviv, Ukraine, with Natalia Matsenko and Borys Filonenko). She is co-curator of the Ukrainian chapter of the Secondary Archive project.
Dance artist and teacher with a focus on improvisation. Systemic coach for individuals and groups. M. Kleinschnittger has over 25 years of experience as a contemporary dancer, choreographer and teacher of dance, movement and improvisation in Europe. He has been working as a coach and facilitator since 2017. He has developed his Embodied Communication Practice from the combination of both professions. He has also been a podcaster since 2025
organisational and existential coach, facilitator and trainer, psychologist. Author and coordinator of mentoring and civil society capacity building programmes.
An artistic and curatorial group founded by Maryna Marinychenko and Valerie Karpan. Variable Name / Назва змінна works at the intersection of participatory art and non-formal education. The artists are interested in the processes of communication and exchange in the urban environment, multisensory experiences, memory, and commemoration practices.
Publication
The special project for Ukrainian women artists coordinated by MRI resulted in a collaboratively developed collection of participants’ works. Living and working together opened space for free thinking and new perspectives and allowed a mutually supportive feminist community to emerge. Each artist contributed to this collaborative project individual works created throughout the residency, be it text, drawings, photographs or evidence of a performance or film. All these works reflect the diverse experiences of living through war, of personal and collective trauma and shifting identities. Artistic discourse and exploration along with community, in a sense, became a catalyst for new meaning.
Link to the publication - Coming soon!
