OF HEAVEN AND EARTH: Ukrainian Sacred Art and the Good Life

Since 2022, Ukrainian artists have been living and working amid a full-scale war, a reality that has profoundly reshaped artistic language, thematic focus, and modes of spiritual reflection. Within this context, contemporary Ukrainian iconography has emerged as a vital medium for articulating experiences of loss, faith, and human dignity.

Organized by the Ukrainian Studies Hub at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies in partnership with the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, Ukraine, OF HEAVEN AND EARTH: Ukrainian Sacred Art and the Good Life is an artist residency and exhibition of Ukrainian iconography and sacred art. Commemorating five years since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the exhibition brings new artwork from a plein air residency at UCU alongside a curated selection of masterworks from Lviv’s ICONART Gallery to Notre Dame and our region. Rooted in tradition yet deeply responsive to present realities, the project aims to transform the exhibition into a site of witness, presenting a new way of seeing life in Ukraine and holding together both suffering and transcendence, trauma and hope.

The exhibition and its related programs will open on February 24, 2027, and continue through Notre Dame’s biennial Ukrainian Studies conference, “The Duty of the Good Life: Ukrainian perspectives on living at the edge,” from March 18–20, 2027.

Participating artists: Oksana Andruschenko, Ivan Dashko (remote participant), Kateryna Haneychuk, Alina Hrubets, Olya Kravchenko, Ulyana Krekhovets (coordinator of residency), Kateryna Kuziv, Danylo Movchan, Hlafira Mykhailiv (remote participant), Taras Novak (remote participant), Ulyana Nyshchuk, Anastasia Paruta-Dashko (remote participant), Oksana Romaniv-Triska, Natalia Rusetska, Iryna Solonynka, Sviatoslav Vladyka (remote participant, has been fighting in the Defense Forces of Ukraine since 2022; works created on the front line), Albina Yaloza, Ronan Zilinko.

Credits

Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Since 1992, the Nanovic Institute has led Notre Dame to Europe, and Europe to Notre Dame. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies enriches the intellectual culture of Notre Dame by serving as an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students and scholars to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs, histories, and institutions that shape Europe. To pursue this mission, the institute works to promote European studies at Notre Dame, transform its undergraduates, professionalize its graduate students, foster its interdisciplinary faculty research, and build its global network. Since convening its Catholic Universities Partnership in 2004, Nanovic has partnered closely with Catholic universities across Central and Eastern Europe, including, perhaps most importantly, Ukrainian Catholic University. By turning hearts and minds toward Europe, the Nanovic Institute seeks to create artisans of a new humanity.

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Ukrainian Catholic University

Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) is an open academic community living the Eastern Christian tradition and forming leaders to serve with professional excellence in Ukraine and internationally – for the glory of God, the common good, and the dignity of the human person. As the first Catholic university in the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, UCU is at the forefront of building a civil society in Ukraine, educating its students to be ethical and moral leaders of a new Ukraine. Located in Western Ukraine, in the heart of Ukraine’s cultural city of Lviv, the Ukrainian Catholic University offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in subjects such as computer science, business, law, theology, government administration, and rehabilitation medicine.

For more than a decade, UCU has organized artistic residencies and plein air events, including recent iconography plein air residencies exploring the experience of war through painting and sacred art.

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ICONART Gallery

Founded in 2010 by Konstyantyn Shumskyy as an initiative that grew out of a project at the UCU Business School, ICONART is one of Ukraine’s leading galleries dedicated to contemporary sacred art. Over more than fifteen years, the gallery has organized and participated in nearly 200 exhibitions and international projects in Ukraine, Europe, and the United States, presenting several generations of Ukrainian artists. ICONART creates a platform for contemporary approaches to Christian art, bringing tradition into dialogue with present-day experience and visual culture. Through exhibitions, collaborations, and international partnerships, the gallery supports Ukrainian artists and contributes to the evolving language of contemporary sacred art.

John Kohan

John Kohan is a collector, writer, and longtime friend of ICONART Gallery, as well as a dedicated supporter of contemporary Ukrainian sacred art. Over the years, he has assembled a significant collection of works by ICONART artists, helping introduce their art to wider international audiences. For Of Heaven and Earth, Kohan will lend selected works from his collection, contributing an important private-collection perspective and strengthening the project’s dialogue between artists, institutions, collectors, and audiences in Ukraine and the United States.

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Funding & Support

This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.

This project is also made possible with funding from the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Global Catholic Research Initiative.