The Women in Arts Award 2023
The Women in Arts Award returned this year to celebrate the power and contribution of Ukrainian women to culture. In 2022, the ceremony did not happen due to the outbreak of the full-scale war. Women in Arts 2023 took on a new meaning, which was reflected in the title "The Resistance."
The award started in 2019 as part of the HeForShe Arts Week campaign, aimed at drawing attention to the achievements of female artists in Ukraine who have historically remained out of the limelight of the Ukrainian art scene.
This year the prize has been awarded in eight nominations: visual art, music, theatre, literature, film, cultural management, journalism and criticism, as well as ‘special mention’. The nominees in each category include writers, artists and cultural figures, contributors to Ukrainian culture.
This year, the award had an additional selection criterion, "contribution to victory," which takes into account activities in the military, volunteer, cultural or any other sphere that directly brings Ukraine's victory closer.
Thus, the nominees included poet and now a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a combat medic in the Ukrainian Marines Yaryna Chornohuz; the world-famous Ukrainian opera singer Liudmyla Monastyrska; singer Jamala; director Marina Er Gorbach, whose film Klondike won the Sundance Film Festival award; and Olena Honcharuk, Director General of the Dovzhenko Center.
The winners of the 2023 Award in the respective categories:
• Women in Visual Arts – Alevtina Kakhidze (Artist and writer, working predominantly with performance and drawing)
• Women in Music – Alla Zahaikevych (Composer of contemporary classical music, performance artist, organiser of electroacoustic music projects, musicologist)
• Women in Theatre – Nina Zakhozhenko (Playwright and theater practitioner)• Women in Film – Alina Gorlova (Filmmaker, director, and screenwriter, specialising in documentaries)• Women in Literature – Halyna Kruk (Poet, writer, translator, educator and literary critic)
• Women in Cultural Management – Yuliia Vahanova (Director of the Khanenko Museum)
• Women in Cultural Journalism, Criticism and Research – Anastasia Platonova (Journalist, independent cultural critic, editor)
• Special mention – Yuliya “Cuba” Sidorova (Volunteering paramedic, a well-known figure among military and volunteers)
Among the visual arts laureates of the previous years were Vlada Ralko (2019), Lada Nakonechna (2020), and Alina Kleytman (2021). The winners of the Women in Arts Award receive the prize figurine designed by Ukrainian sculptor Maria Kulikovska. The statuette is designed in a form of two hands with the palms conjoined, symbolizing the support between women.