SHAPING THE NARRATIVE OF UKRAINIAN CULTURAL RESILIENCE IN THE MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF THE EXHIBITION “ALLA HORSKA. BORYVITER”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2026.2.48Keywords:
cultural policy, wartime culture, media representation, narrative of resilience, exhibition practices, Alla Horska, cultural memoryAbstract
The article examines the media representation of the exhibition “Alla Horska. Boryviter” as an institutional practice of wartime cultural policy. The aim of the study is to determine how the exhibition project and its media coverage participate in shaping the narrative of Ukrainian cultural resilience under the conditions of the full-scale Russian–Ukrainian war. The empirical basis of the research consists of a corpus of 54 media texts published in March–May 2024 as a response to the exhibition. The methodological framework includes cultural analysis, a narrative approach, an institutional perspective, elements of hermeneutic interpretation, categorical content analysis, lexical analysis and discourse analysis. The theoretical framework is based on approaches to cultural memory, cultural trauma and the narrative organization of experience. The article identifies the main semantic blocks of the narrative of resilience: the wartime actualization of the exhibition, historical continuity between Soviet repression and contemporary Russian aggression, the rhetoric of loss and indestructibility, the sacralization of Alla Horska’s figure, the state-building dimension of culture, and the motif of chosen Ukrainian identity. The study shows that the media representation of the exhibition not only informs the public about an artistic event, but also constructs its social significance by inscribing the artist’s biography and the legacy of the Sixtiers into a broader context of cultural memory, traumatic experience and symbolic mobilization. It is demonstrated that the genre-temporal dynamics of the coverage moves from the initial news framing of the wartime and historical context to the analytical interpretation of the artist’s figure and the legitimation of the exhibition through public resonance. The article argues that, under wartime conditions, the exhibition functions as a mechanism of cultural memory, public meaning-making and symbolic self-affirmation of the Ukrainian community
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