Remembrance
The 2025 PinchukArtCentre Prize was awarded in an atmosphere deeply overshadowed by Russia's war against Ukraine. This biennial event, dedicated to Ukrainian artists under 35, took on a particularly solemn resonance this year, situated at the intersection of art, memory, and political commitment.
Photo by Oleksandr Piliugin, PinchukArtCentre / PinchukArtCentre Prize 2025.
Despite this difficult context, the ceremony retained a sense of joy, beginning with a minute of silence in tribute to war victims. The tragic fate of Veronika Kozhushko, a young artist from Kharkiv who had submitted her application before being killed in a Russian missile strike on 30 August 2024, was evoked with emotion. A tribute was paid to her by the artistic director Björn Geldhof and the jury. At the PinchukArt Centre, and throughout Ukraine, art is now becoming as much a field of action as a testimony of lives cut short, of broken histories.
An aesthetic of silence and light
Lesia Vasylchenko, 34, received the main award for her installation Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves (2022–2025). Presented in a dark room, the work consists of two videos: on the upper part of the wall, thirty years of sunrises, from Ukraine's independence in 1991 to the Russian invasion in 2022. Below, a second projection blends archive footage and nocturnal photographs, from the past century to the present. Without showing the war directly, Vasylchenko explores absence, light, and shadows to evoke violence, buried memories, and the transformation of a nation.
Lesia Vasylchenko, Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves (2022–2025). Photos: © Quentin Geiger.
Based in Oslo, the artist studied journalism in Kyiv and visual arts at the National Academy in Oslo. Her work interrogates temporality and the way in which technologies shape our perception of reality. It speaks of a present haunted by absence and the unfulfilled promises of futures, while inviting reflection on history, intimacy, and the ways Ukraine is perceived today, by itself, its artists, and the world.
The jury offered these words on her work: "The sky — once a space of freedom — becomes a backdrop for disasters, but also a space of memory and contemplation."
View of Kyiv. Photo : © Quentin Geiger.
This year’s international jury included Carina Bukuts, curator and writer at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; Marta Czyź, art historian, independent curator and critic, and curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024; Björn Geldhof, artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre; Alevtina Kakhidze, artist; and Lesia Khomenko, artist, co-founder of the R.E.P. group and the Hudrada collective.
At the ceremony, Lesia Vasylchenko announced that she would donate the entire amount of her prize, UAH 400,000 (approximately £ 7,100), to the Ukrainian military, a gesture that deeply moved the assembly.
Photo by Oleksandr Piliugin, PinchukArtCentre / PinchukArtCentre Prize 2025.
From paintings of mourning to sketches of the front
Two Special Prizes were also awarded this year.
The first went to Kateryna Aliinyk, born in Luhansk. Through landscapes populated by wild boars, insects, and quivering trees, the artist composes a form of visual poetry of displacement and mourning. "Her work is a moving emotional record in which painting becomes a tool of memory, mourning and resistance," said the jury.
Kateryna Aliinyk's work. Photos : © Quentin Geiger.
The second Special Prize was awarded to Yevhen Korshunov, who also made history as the first artist to simultaneously receive the Public Prize, awarded by the exhibition visitors. A soldier and a cartoonist, Korshunov tells the story of the war from a human perspective, through sketches and anecdotes imbued with tenderness and attention. The jury noted: "His drawings and anecdotes render the anonymous figure of the soldier visible, individual, and human." They added: "His work embodies the transition of men, their bodies, their goals and functions."
Yevhen Korshunov's work. Photos : © Quentin Geiger.
Each artist will receive 100,000 UAH (approximately £ 1,800), and support for their production.
"We should keep making weapons"
Victor Pinchuk, founder of the Prize, placed Ukrainian artistic practice in a context of struggle, with this powerful statement: "Ukrainian art today is a weapon. We should keep making weapons."
The philanthropist continued: "We have presented the works of Ukrainian artists at major and politically significant events — in Washington, in Davos during the World Economic Forum, in Munich during the Security Conference — and I have seen heads of governments, heads of states, moved to tears. We need their emotions because those emotions influence their decisions. And as a result, we received more weapons."
View of Vasyl Dmytryk's work. Photo : © Quentin Geiger.
The PinchukArtCentre Prize has thus become far more than a competition. It is a platform for diplomacy of sensibility, where works serve both as agents of influence and bearers of memory.
Finalists of the 2025 PinchukArtCentre Prize
Mykhailo Alekseenko (Kyiv), Kateryna Aliinyk (Kyiv/Luhansk), Yuriy Bolsa (Chervonohrad), Vasyl Dmytryk (Ivano-Frankivsk/Odessa), Maksym Khodak (Vienna/Kyiv/Bila Tserkva), Yevhen Korshunov (Brovary/Kyiv), Kateryna Lysovenko (Kyiv/Vienna), Krystyna Melnyk (Kyiv/Melitopol), Daria Molokoiedova (Kramatorsk/Kyiv), Vladislav Plisetskiy (Kyiv), Andrii Rachynskyi (Kharkiv), Anton Saenko (Sumy/Kyiv), Anton Shebetko (Kyiv/Amsterdam), Zhenia Stepanenko (Kyiv/Berlin), Vasyl Tkachenko (Lyakh/Mariupol), Illia Todurkin (Mariupol/Kyiv), Tamara Turliun (Dnipro/Kyiv), Lesia Vasylchenko (Kyiv/Oslo), Yuri Yefanov (Gurzuf), collectif Variable Name (Valerie Karpan & Maryna Marynychenko).
Lesia Vasylchenko now joins the previous laureates Dana Kavelina (2022), Group Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Himey (2020), Anna Zvyagintseva (2018), Anna Zvyagintseva (2015), Zhanna Kadyrova (2013), Mykyta Kadan (2011), and Artem Volokitin (2009).
Exhibition
📍 PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv
🗓 Until 13 July 2025
🕛 Open Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00 – 21:00
🧭 Curated by Oleksandra Pogrebnyak, with Oksana Chornobrova and Kateryna Kostenko
