By: Leah Mordehai and Nellie Fouksman

A little over a year ago, we started Slavic Voice 4 Ukraine with a simple goal: we wanted young people to have a space to connect with Ukrainian culture and with each other. This idea is behind one of our newest projects, “Blooms from the Ashes: In Honor of Maria Prymachenko,” an international youth art competition celebrating Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko.

Prymachenko created incredibly colorful and imaginative paintings filled with flowers, animals, strange creatures and scenes inspired by Ukrainian folk traditions. Her work is bright and playful at first glance, but throughout her life she also used art to express ideas about war, peace and humanity. We wanted young people to have the chance to discover her work and then interpret those ideas for themselves. Moreover, Prymachenko’s work took on new meaning after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, which held works by Prymachenko, was destroyed during fighting, and some of her paintings were lost. Residents were able to save several pieces from the burning museum. The destruction made her art an even stronger symbol of Ukrainian culture and the importance of protecting it during the war.

For the competition, young artists are invited to create original artwork inspired by Prymachenko’s artistic style, Ukrainian folk traditions and messages of peace and humanity. We are not looking for people to simply recreate her paintings. We want to see what happens when a new generation encounters Ukrainian folk art and asks, “What does this mean to me?” Someone in Kyiv might answer that question completely differently from someone in New York, Kazakhstan or right here in the Richmond District. That is exactly what makes the project exciting to us. We also wanted the artwork to have somewhere meaningful to go after the competition ends. Selected and winning pieces are planned to be exhibited on an international stage by United Nations-accredited organizations and will be sent directly to communities in Ukraine.

Most of all, we would love to see young artists from Richmond participate. Our neighborhood is filled with immigrant families, artists, students and people whose identities stretch across countries and generations. You do not have to be Ukrainian or Slavic to submit. In fact, part of the point is introducing more young people to Ukrainian culture and giving them the space to interpret it through their own experiences. Maybe someone discovers Prymachenko in an art class at a Richmond District school. Maybe someone sees the competition while getting pastries on Geary. Maybe a student who has never thought much about Ukrainian art ends up creating something that becomes part of an exhibition here in San Francisco.

“Blooms from the Ashes” is accepting submissions through Dec. 31. For us, this competition is another version of the same idea that started Slavic Voice in the first place. Culture does not stay alive just because it existed before us. It stays alive because people continue writing about it, speaking its languages, cooking its food, telling its stories, and, sometimes, picking up a paintbrush. From Ukraine to San Francisco and back to our little corner of Richmond, we hope this project gives another generation a reason to do exactly that. Submit at forms.gle/Qxu4j4xTt6gVpVHNA

Slavic Voice 4 Ukraine is a youth-led nonprofit media platform based in San Francisco, started by Richmond District residents. Our mission is to amplify the voices, perspectives and cultural heritage of Slavic communities – both in the Bay Area and abroad.