Boris Mikhailov – Bulletins – e-flux

The Ukrainian Museum New York is proud to current Boris Mikhailov, the primary main museum exhibition of the celebrated Ukrainian photographer in New York City. Opening on September 14, 2025, and operating till January 18, 2026, the exhibition provides a profound journey via Mikhailov’s groundbreaking photographic apply, which captures the complexities of life in post-Soviet Ukraine. The exhibition will give attention to a number of works from two seminal sequence that characterize each the chrysalis of Mikhailov’s oeuvre; Yesterday’s Sandwich, as properly the fruits of his continued pursuit for an expressive visible language over many a long time in Parliament. Together, these works hint an arc from non-public to public, from fragile particular person existence to the bigger machinations of political life, illuminating the complexities of Ukraine’s previous and its current place on the worldwide stage. This exhibition of opposites goals to light up Mikhailov’s evolution as an artist and the thematic continuity evident in his oeuvre.

Boris Mikhailov emerged as a revolutionary determine within the realm of pictures, most notably along with his seminal sequence, Yesterday’s Sandwich, created within the late Nineteen Sixties and early Seventies. This sequence, distinguished by its layering of negatives from disparate pictures, displays Mikhailov’s capability to weave complicated narratives via visible juxtaposition. Each composition serves as a dialogue between previous and current, encapsulating the stark realities of Soviet life and the ephemeral nature of reminiscence. With Yesterday’s Sandwich, Mikhailov summarised Soviet life in Kharkiv, Ukraine, as surreal and weirdly uncommon.

Yesterday’s Sandwich was produced by Mikhailov as an audacious response to the constrictions of an oppressive Soviet regime. With every body, Mikhailov wove collectively the threads of magnificence and grotesque, using handbook manipulation to overlap the narratives of troopers, residents, and on a regular basis life. His pictures, a visible cacophony, offered a duality: the pedestrian lifelessness juxtaposed with moments of serene grace. They evoked the silent whispers of pleasure amidst despair, difficult the viewer’s notion of Soviet id.

Captured via an analogue lens, the pictures defied the constraints of their period, every body a testomony to resilience and creativity. The laughter of kids danced amid the ashes of struggle, the radiant colours of a fading sundown pierced the fog of monotony. Mikhailov’s work, unseen, grew to become a silent revolution, a profound reminder that magnificence, even in vacancy, might blossom within the coronary heart of darkness.

Decades later, Mikhailov created the Parliament sequence, which he accomplished in 2017, embodying a mature lens targeted on societal change and political discourse. Adopting the aesthetics of glitch artwork and decomposed pictures, which function visible metaphors for cyberbalkanization and the splintering of media communities, the artist continued his seek for expressive visible strategies to complement his signature superimpositions, aniline hand-colouring, and handwriting on the margins of pictures.

Curated by Peter Doroshenko, Director of The Ukrainian Museum, the exhibition underscores Mikhailov’s singular function in shaping Ukrainian visible tradition. Doroshenko notes:

“Boris Mikhailov is Ukraine’s most celebrated living artist. Combining an early series of works, Yesterday’s Sandwich, and his last in-depth body of photographs, Parliament, creates an interesting polar overview of both Ukrainian history and current global political posturing. Mikhailov exposes what we already know about Ukraine’s past and the influences on it today.”