Boris Mikhailov-Ukrainian Diary

A major retrospective of work by influential Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov (b. 1938, Kharkiv, Ukraine). 

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Ukrainian Diary is the first major UK retrospective of work by Boris Mikhailov, one of the most influential contemporary artists from Eastern Europe. Mikhailov has explored social and political subjects for more than fifty years through his experimental photographic work.

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Described as an outsider, a trickster and ‘a kind of proto-punk', Mikhailov combines humour, mischief and tragedy in his pioneering practice, ranging from documentary photography and conceptual work, to painting and performance. Since the 1960s, he has been creating a powerful record of the tumultuous changes in Ukraine that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian Diary brings together work from over twenty of his most important series, up to his more recent projects. Viewed today, against the backdrop of current events and ongoing war in Ukraine, Mikhailov's work is all the more poignant and enlightening.  

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Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1938, Boris Mikhailov has spent decades pointing his camera at the overlooked, the uncomfortable, and the unabashedly human. Growing up in a Soviet system that valued order and obedience, Mikhailov was used to navigating life in a society intent on keeping up appearances. Decades later, he would become famous precisely for undoing those illusions with his boldly experimental photographs.

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