ART KYIV Autumn Edition 2025

“Having extensive experience participating in international art fairs, I clearly understand how crucial it is today to create and sustain projects of this scale in Kyiv. This is not only a cultural event, but also a symbol of our resilience and our belief in the future.

We are deeply grateful to our defenders, who protect Ukraine and make it possible for us to hold this fair, as well as to the Kyiv City State Administration’s Department of Culture for its support.

This year, Anna Avetova was appointed Director of the fair, a confident professional with substantial experience in organizing cultural events, and I would like to express my sincere thanks to the entire team for the tremendous organizational work that made Art Kyiv a reality.”

— Tetiana Mironova, Founder and Initiator of the Fair, Director of the Municipal Gallery Lavra

 Held from October 2 to 5, 2025, at the historic Lavra Gallery, the fair marked the first autumn edition under the renewed name ART KYIV, continuing the legacy of Kyiv Art Market while introducing a new team, strategy, and long-term vision. More than a rebranding, this edition functioned as a structural reset, a deliberate test of whether a professional art fair model can operate sustainably in Ukraine under conditions of ongoing war.

The ambition behind ART KYIV is not symbolic resilience but systemic continuity. Ukraine needs a robust commercial art fair not for prestige, but as a stabilizing anchor for the art market, a recurring institutional moment when galleries, artists, collectors, museums, and corporate actors converge to build dialogue, trust, and economic circulation. Without such a platform, the ecosystem remains fragmented, vulnerable to isolation, and unable to sustain the regular cycles of visibility and exchange that define mature art markets. ART KYIV positions itself as that missing infrastructure: a site where market activity and cultural discourse can coexist, intersect, and mutually reinforce one another.

The 2025 Autumn Edition brought together 27 galleries and institutions from Ukraine, Europe, and the United States, including participants from Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Berlin, Gdańsk, and Los Angeles. 
Over four days, ART KYIV welcomed more than 4,000 visitors, including collectors, curators, museum directors, and representatives from international cultural institutions. Confirmed sales exceeded USD 100,000, with 145 commercial transactions completed during the fair. The average purchase amounted to approximately USD 700, with painting and sculpture emerging as the most actively collected categories. While these figures reflect a developing market rather than an established international hub, they signal genuine economic activity, not aspirational projection. Beyond immediate sales, participants reported around 400 new professional contacts and eight partnerships planned for future collaboration, indicators of long-term impact that extend beyond the event’s temporal boundaries.

The economics of the fair matter precisely because they measure more than revenue. They reveal patterns of trust: whether collectors are willing to commit resources, whether galleries see strategic value in participation, and whether artists can envision sustainable careers within the domestic market. In this sense, ART KYIV’s sales figures function less as a performance metric and more as evidence of structural viability.

Parallel to the main exposition, ART KYIV delivered an extensive public and educational program comprising 12 events: panel discussions on the current state of the art market, curated tours, and artist talks. The format was intentionally designed to balance commercial visibility with reflective and experimental discourse, allowing space for both market-driven and research-oriented practices. This duality is critical. Art fairs risk becoming purely transactional environments if they do not simultaneously create conditions for critical engagement, peer exchange, and institutional legitimacy.

A central curatorial highlight was the international special project Before the Future, developed in collaboration with Taiwanese artist Isa Ho, curator Marta Trotsiuk, and the Kyiv National Art Gallery. The project documents the lived experiences of Ukrainian women artists during the war through photography, video, and documentary material. Positioned as a long-term research initiative rather than a site-specific installation, Before the Future will be presented internationally in Taiwan in 2026, marking ART KYIV’s expansion toward a cross-cultural, research-based model rather than a purely transactional fair. This trajectory from local documentation to international presentation suggests an ambition to reframe Ukrainian art not as an object of humanitarian attention but as an active participant in global contemporary discourse.

Visitors were welcomed by Peace, a neon installation by Ukrainian artist Stepan Ryabchenko, placed at the fair’s entrance. The work functioned as a symbolic threshold, a gesture of transition from historical cycles of disruption toward a new phase of artistic and institutional development. Ryabchenko’s intervention was understated yet legible, establishing a tone of measured optimism without lapsing into sentimentality.

 In parallel with the public program, ART KYIV introduced a quiet, internal competition for ART KYIV Gallery Awards 2025. Conceived as a discreet professional gesture rather than a promotional spectacle, the competition aimed to highlight excellence in curatorial clarity, spatial design, and conceptual coherence within the fair format.

The jury evaluated booths based on artistic presentation, curatorial logic, visual integrity, and professional execution. Importantly, the competition was conducted without prior public announcement, allowing participants to engage with the fair organically, without performative pressure. This approach reflects a broader philosophy: that quality should be recognized after the fact, not incentivized through spectacle. It also acknowledges the uneven conditions under which galleries operate, some with long-established exhibition histories, others navigating wartime constraints on logistics, staffing, and resources.

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The jury brought together artists, curators, and cultural professionals working across Ukraine, Europe, and the United States

Kateryna Reznichenko — Ukrainian artist based in Seattle, working primarily with oil painting and watercolor. A graduate of the Lviv National Academy of Arts, her practice explores transformation and the tension between control and spontaneity. Her works have been exhibited internationally and are held in private collections worldwide.

Oleksandra Korolenko — Ukrainian artist and muralist known for hyperrealistic works and large-scale projects in Ukraine and the United States. Specializing in aerography and mixed-media wall painting, she brings a strong focus on technical mastery and visual precision.

Myroslav Duzinkevych — Ukrainian artist working at the intersection of fine art painting and scenographic practice for film and theater. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across Ukraine, Europe, and the United States, including MORA Museum of Contemporary Art (New Jersey) and Kate Oh Gallery (New York). He is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829, the Salmagundi Club (New York), and the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.

Mariia Manuilenko — Ukrainian curator and cultural manager working between New York and Kharkiv. Co-founder of Rukh Art Hub and Art Territory, she has curated over thirty exhibitions across the United States and Europe. Her curatorial publications are represented in the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dasha Bilenko — Ukrainian art curator, art manager, and lecturer with over seven years of professional experience and more than sixty realized art projects in Ukraine and internationally. Her practice focuses on emerging artists, personal identity, and emotional reflection. She is a co-founder of ART NAVIGATOR ACADEMY and related educational platforms.

Olena Yehorova — independent curator, art mediator, and cultural manager working between Switzerland and Ukraine. Founder of the [site-specific] platform, her practice focuses on engagement, public art, and participatory formats at the intersection of contemporary art, education, and social research.

Khrystyna Stavska — architect and interior designer, founder of IDEAL HOME London, working at the intersection of architecture, contemporary design, and art. She develops projects across the UK and Europe, collaborating with international brands, galleries, and private collectors, with a professional focus on curatorial approaches to space and the integration of art as the conceptual core of contemporary interiors.

Sofia Milano — editor-in-chief, cultural and design professional working at the intersection of contemporary design, lifestyle media, and visual culture. Since 2018, she has served as Chief Editor of Royal Design Magazine, overseeing editorial strategy and content focused on architecture, design, luxury objects, and contemporary art.

ART KYIV Gallery Awards 2025 award was granted to:

Snisarenko Gallery (Booth A6), Los Angeles, USA

The winning booth stood out for its curatorial consistency, spatial clarity, and ability to articulate a strong artistic narrative within the fair context.

The upcoming Spring Edition 2026 is already in development, with a focus on expanding international participation and strengthening connections between art, local business, and philanthropic initiatives. This rhythm, two editions per year, consistently delivered, is itself a form of infrastructure. It creates predictability, allows galleries to plan inventory and participation strategically, and signals to international actors that engagement with the Ukrainian art market is not contingent on crisis but grounded in institutional permanence.

The fair’s organizers understand that sustainability requires more than event execution. It demands the cultivation of long-term relationships between artists and collectors, between galleries and museums, commercial activity, and public programming. It requires demonstrating, edition after edition, that Ukrainian art is not a niche interest tied to geopolitical urgency but a living, evolving field of practice deserving of sustained attention.

Beyond statistics, ART KYIV Autumn Edition 2025 reaffirmed Kyiv’s role as a cultural platform in Eastern Europe. Not as a symbolic gesture, but as functioning infrastructure, one that enables Ukrainian art to remain visible, economically active, and internationally engaged. The question is no longer whether such a platform can exist under wartime conditions. The question is how it can deepen, expand, and consolidate its position as a necessary node in the region’s cultural and economic landscape.

Author: Valeriia Samoilenko