Zenyk Art Gallery presents NASHI: OURS—one of the largest exhibitions of Ukrainian naïve art, Primitivism and Art Brut in recent years, bringing together 207 works by 27 Ukrainian artists and makers, from the Hutsul village of Kryvorivnia in the Carpathians to Slobozhanshchyna, a historical and cultural region in eastern Ukraine.
WHAT IS THE EXHIBITION ABOUT?
NASHI: OURS is an exhibition about talent and tradition—and about how talent can save it. It is about tradition as sand slipping through our fingers unless we catch it in time through artistic expression. The exhibition’s central message is to show how folk tradition is transformed into an individual artistic universe, preserved and carried forward by professionally trained artists, folk artists and artists working outside formal institutions. At a time when traditions can easily be lost amid the rapid pace of contemporary life, art becomes a means not only of preserving them, but also of reinterpreting them.
WHAT DOES THE EXHIBITION CONSIST OF?
The exhibition is divided into three sections and introduces three artistic phenomena—Primitivism, naïve art and Art Brut—exploring their nature, their differences and their connections with folk tradition. The featured artists include Maria Prymachenko, Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit, Hanna Sobachko-Shostak, Yevmen Pshechenko, Nikifor Drovniak, Iryna Maksymova, Dmytro Moldovanov, Yana Hudzan, Tetiana Mialkovska, Dmytro Stryjek and other Ukrainian artists.
AND WHAT DO ELEPHANTS AND FLIES HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
Elephants and flies form a distinct narrative thread throughout the project. While examining the artists’ practices through the prism of style, the curatorial team identified a motif shared by different artists: the elephant and the fly, reflected in the proverb “Don’t Make an Elephant Out of a Fly.” The history of this motif reaches back to the Baroque era, when an early image of an elephant appeared in the murals of the Trinity Gate Church at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The image—both literal and stylised—later continued to “wander” through the work of Primitivist, naïve and Art Brut artists.
The exhibition includes works from the collections of the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine, the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv, the Klymentii Sheptytskyi Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life in Lviv, the Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit Museum, KUMF Gallery and Studio by Olya Stavnykovych, as well as drawings provided by the Lviv Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital.
The exhibition is curated by Khrystyna Berehovska, Director of ZAG Gallery, Doctor of Art History and Professor at the Lviv National Academy of Arts.
NASHI: OURS will be on view at ZAG from 16 July to 31 October 2026.
The works in the exhibition are insured by UNIQA Ukraine.