This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

To see images pertaining to this episode (including Darja's social sculpture End of the World Bread) you can watch the YouTube version: https://youtu.be/x3mV2gaGj-4

Darja Lukjanenko is a Ukrainian visual art student based in Prague, Czech Republic, who, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, started giving lectures about Ukrainian art to the public to amend what she perceived as a pervasive ignorance about Ukrainian heritage and the sovereignty of its art.

During our interview, Darja and I sat next to her “social sculpture” called End of the World Bread. It’s a table with a white tablecloth and on it some six loaves of bread. The soil baked into the bread was collected in Kiev by another Ukrainian artist, Bohdana Zaiats, on the first days of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Darja and I talk about bread as a universal symbol of home, an open letter Darja wrote to a major Czech arts organization since the beginning of the war, the potentially problematic use of the word “decolonize” in the context of post-Soviet countries, and the artists social responsibility, among other things.

Darja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darjalukjanenko

Music for this episode is by Sasha Lukjanenko, from Darja’s project called Lullaby for Plevel: https://vimeo.com/476913174

More about this podcast: onthevergetrilogy.com