This talk will focus on ambicolonial theory as a new theoretical framework proposed by Svitlana Biedarieva in her recent book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian–Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) to examine the complex and intertwined colonial entanglement between Russia and Ukraine. Positioned beyond traditional postcolonial and decolonial paradigms, the concept of “ambicoloniality” challenges the linear model of colonizer versus colonized by emphasizing mutual symbolic exchange, cultural proximity, and the shared border as a site of two-way filtering of cultural and social influences. Drawing on concepts such as postcolonial hybridity versus internal hybridity, ambivalence, syncretic polarization, jouissance, and decolonial release, the theory speaks to the current situation in which Ukraine has become Russia's territory of obsession, and Russia, in its desire to occupy Ukraine, has in effect subjected itself to Ukraine’s symbolic dominance. This talk argues that the Ukrainian–Russian case offers a unique opportunity to broaden the methodology beyond that offered in postcolonial and decolonial theories by revealing how symbolic power, colonial desire, and entangled epistemic production reshape colonial dynamics in culturally adjacent regions.
Speaker: Svitlana Bedarieva (SHERA/UDSN)
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian–Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) and the editor of Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024), and Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021 (ibidem Press, 2021), among others. She is the General Editor of The Harvard History of Ukrainian Art book series (forthcoming). Biedarieva serves as President of the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) and is the Founder and Executive Director of Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network. She has published texts in leading academic journals and media outlets, such as October, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Financial Times, and The Art Newspaper. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. For more information on her publications: https://svitlanabiedarieva.com/
Moderator: Dr. Anton Saifullayeu (University of Warsaw)
Discussant: Prof. Izabela Blackwood-Kalinowska (Stony Brook University)