A mythical, poetic, and visual Kobzar

On February 28 Kyiv is going to host the first part of We Were Just Walking, a wide-scale international art project being held on the initiative of the New York-based Ukrainian Institute of America and dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth. The event will take place in Kyiv and New York.

The project’s curator and co-curator are artists Petro Bevza and Mykola Skyba, respectively. The organizer is the Huss Family Printing House, while the Art Development Foundation is furnishing support. The Kyiv Mohyla Business School is the project’s general partner.

Artists Petro Bevza and Mykola Zhuravel show the spectator the genius’s multifaceted image. In their artistic interpretation, Shevchenko is not just a poet but a seer of the future and the inspirer of the nation’s national power. Art is never silent: it will say its word even when there are barricades around.

Both masters executed their works in the mytho-poetic style of 21st-century Ukrainian art. The spectator is invited to reflect on the importance of Taras Shevchenko’s role in shaping the personality of every Ukrainian, forming the national idea, and uniting the nation in today’s conditions.