Exhibition: Our Fire Is Stronger Than Your Bombs

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war continues until now, ruining the lives of millions of people and uprooting the principles of civilized life as we know it.

This exhibition was first installed at Dartmouth College from February 24-March 31, 2023 at the one year anniversary of the war with a goal of raising awareness about the war raging in the heart of Europe. The exhibit showcases some of the brilliant artworks of contemporary Ukrainian illustrators living and working in Ukraine, sometimes, with no power, water, cell signal, or Internet connection. Many of them have long been collaborating with global media, in particular, New Yorker, the Atlantic, Zeit, Adweek, and other outlets.

The posters on display have been created by nine emerging and well-established illustrators since the start of the full-scale invasion. A poster, as a form of fine art blending imagery and text, is a convenient and laconic statement, a means of rapid, shareable response to the urgent events and personal emotions they trigger. In the context of the massive information war, illustrators have become the voices of the art community, and their activism adds tangible strength to the ‘cultural troops’ who fight propaganda every day, broadcasting facts through artistic images and defending the truth as eyewitnesses.

The physical exhibition is complemented by a digital one hosted on the Dartmouth Library digital exhibits’ platform.

This event is co-sponsored by Salem State’s  Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS).

Exhibition Events

Wednesday, February 21

Curator's Talk: 12:30-1:30 pm with Veronika Yadukha and Hanna Leliv. This discussion will be moderated by Regina Kazyulina, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 

Reception-1:30-3 pm

Gallery Discussions

February 14 and 28 and March 6

12-1 pm

Exhibition Co-curators

Veronika Yadukha, an art curator of Ukraine's annual literary and translation festival TRANSLATORIUM and a member of VERBatsiya, a collaborative translation group. In 2022-2023, she was a graduate student in the comparative literature program at Dartmouth College. In the fall 2023, Veronika is an artist-in-residence at Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA).

Hanna Leliv, a literary translator from Lviv, Ukraine. A former Fulbright fellow at the University of Iowa's Literary Translation Workshop, she was a 2022-2023 Leslie Center Faculty Fellow at Dartmouth College. In the fall 2023, Hanna is a translator-in-residence at Princeton.

Image by: Bogdana Davydiuk