Ukraine

Diana Berg

I was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, where I have lived till 2014 and was a graphic designer and teacher. After Maidan I‘ve become an activist and have initiated a pro-ukrainian movement in Donetsk in spring 2014, and then had to flee from occupied hometown. After settling down in Mariupol, an industrial town at the Azov sea close to the frontline, I felt the need of changing our country.

I’ve founded Platform Tu – the centre of social changes and the promotion of human rights and freedoms through arts and culture. Being the only grassroots movement in eastern Ukraine that promotes underground culture and modern arts, through our initiatives we address the most acute social themes like gender inequality, discrimination, ultra-right radicalism, paternalism, refugees, totalitarian propaganda, and human rights and freedoms.

As an artist and curator, I was a part polish-ukrainian project Granica, a fellow in Arts Arsenal, and a participant of Art Prospect fellowship in New York. Bur more importantly, I am the head of Platform Tu space and Tu art-group, being both the curator of art-exhibitions and art-residences in our centre and the leader of our art-interventions, performances, public actionism.  We are known through national (and international) media, as our activities draw the attention of nationalists, as Mariupol, being the frontline city, is dominated by ultra-radical ideology and militaristic rhetorics. We strongly believe that what works for culture works against the war.

My interest in memory, post-communism, and private\public has manifested in the initiative Decom – an ongoing project reflecting the decommunisation process i Ukraine. Every April 22th, the birthday of Lenin, we create a pop-up intervention in Mariupol that has a variety of forms, from art-picnic to film screening, from zine to exhibition. Decom in 2019 was an exhibition in local lore museum of Mariupol and was called Decom.Propaganda: