Taras Polataiko: DEFIANCE

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Taras Polataiko, “Oleh,” from “War. 11 Portraits,” 2014

archival inkjet print, 64” x 43” (courtesy Barbara Edwards Contemporary, Toronto)

DEFIANCE features Ukrainian-Canadian artist Taras Polataiko, whose critique of cultural representation is in reaction to political instability attributed to the historic and current Russian aggression in Ukraine. Through video, painting, sculpture, photography and text, Polataiko revisits the ubiquity of Russian-Ukrainian conflict associated with land, language, migration, independence, historical revisioning and cultural genocide.

Each artwork is tied to the confrontation of truth and meaning: a proposition to challenge viewers with questions about who we are, how we are socially constructed, and what we understand about our relationship with power against the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine.

What lingers long after one comprehends the familiar in Polataiko’s art, is the inexplicable visual and emotional impact. Each work is filled with a tension of immediacy, and the incomprehension of a war of perceptual and literal endurance.