The underground and daytime rave scene in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities has become a powerful form of cultural resistance during the war, qualities we need in New York right now, too. The Ukrainian Museum’s Reading Rave brings total strangers together around books, offering volumes published in the 1950s and 60s by the renowned Mystetstvo publishing house in Kyiv, illustrated Diaspora editions and artist books by figures such as Jacques Hnizdovsky, and classics of art history in English spanning American Modernism and contemporary art criticism.

Many of these Mystetstvo bilingual volumes are now scarce and increasingly difficult to find outside institutional collections, this is a rare chance for New Yorkers to leaf-through a genuine piece of Ukrainian print history.

About Mystetstvo Publishing House:

Mystetstvo (Ukrainian for “Art”) holds immense historical significance as the primary specialized state publisher of visual arts and culture in Soviet Ukraine. Founded in 1932 in Kharkiv — then the capital of the Ukrainian SSR — and relocated to Kyiv in 1935, Mystetstvo was a cornerstone of the Soviet centralized printing monopoly. Its legacy reflects a complex tug-of-war between the promotion of Ukrainian national identity and the structures of Soviet ideological control.

Among its output, Ukrainian Museum Reading Rave guest readers  will find high-quality bilingual art monographs and photo albums documenting Ukrainian art history,  many produced in editions that are now rare and largely absent from circulation outside archives and museum libraries — alongside sheet music for theaters and musical institutions across the republic, postcards, theatrical literature, and cinema guides. All will be available to browse in the lobby.

Before the book rave, visitors are invited to join a presentation, Ukrainians: The People Who Couldn’t Go Home, by contemporary Ukrainian artist Nikolay Karabinovych.

About the presentation:

In this presentation, artist Nikolay Karabinovych examines the convergence of post-punk history, musical archives, and the Ukrainian diaspora. Taking as a point of departure a 1981 New Order concert video filmed at the Ukrainian National Home in New York, where the performance opened under a portrait of Taras Shevchenko, the talk explores how pop culture and diaspora heritage intersect. Karabinovych presents his research into musical memory, including his collaboration with Manchester’s Orlyk folk ensemble, reflecting on how sonic archives and speculative memory foster collective solidarity across generations of displacement.

Artist Biography

Nikolay Karabinovych

Nikolay Karabinovych (b. 1988, Odesa, Ukraine, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) works across various media such as video installation, performance, sound, and sculpture. In his artistic practice, Karabinovych addresses complex social (hi)stories, particularly those from the expanses of the “Eastern Block” combining them with personal family narratives. His work questions notions of identity, belonging and exclusion, often referring to music. He revisits epochal songs, genres and personalities and uses their ability to illuminate a different era in a different climate or socio-political arena. In 2020 he graduated from the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odesa Biennale. In 2022, 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Prize.