On Friday, February 21, gather for Ukraine Unbroken, a reception featuring poetry, music, and poster presentations marking the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighboring sovereign nation, Ukraine. Ukraine Unbroken brings together Luisa Muradyan, Julia Kolchinsky and Olena Mladenova, all Ukrainian-born artists currently living in the U.S., with and exhibit by Olga Morozova and poster presentations from Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT) graduate students from the Armed Conflicts and Im/mobility: The Courage, Creativity, and Resilience of People Remaining in Conflict and Disaster Zones special grants initiative. The two-year Armed Conflicts and Im/mobility project explored conflict and disaster zones across the globe, but the impetus for it came in great part after the February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine.
Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of I Make Jokes When I'm Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025) When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), a collaborative collection with Julia Kolchinsky, and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She is the winner of the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize and a member of the Cheburashka Collective. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and the Georgia Review among others.
Julia Kolchinsky is the author of five poetry collections, The Many Names for Mother, Don't Touch the Bones, 40 WEEKS, PARALLAX (University of Arkansas Press, 2025) and When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), a collaborative collection with Luisa Muradyan. Her recent awards include Hunger Mountain's Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, Michigan Quarterly Review's Prize in Nonfiction, and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant. She is at work on a collection of linked lyric essays about parenting her neurodiverse child and the end of her marriage under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, Julia's birthplace. She is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University.
From Mariupol, Ukraine, pianist Olena Mladenova first studied at Donetsk Music Academy and continued at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music. She currently lives in Columbus and is a member of the Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio.
The exhibit Ukraine Unbroken features drawings, paintings, reproductions and original art from the Olga Morozova “Art in a time of war: Sirens in Kyiv” project (Kyiv 2022). The exhibit will hang in the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise Collaboratory in Sullivant Hall on The Ohio State University campus February 17-28, 2025.
This project is sponsored by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme and the Mershon Center.
