#StandwithUkraine virtual event

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Yara Arts Group and the Ukrainian Museum in New York present “#StandWithUkraine” with New York poets, artists and musicians. The event will feature poets Bob Holman, Wanda Phipps and Olena Jennings, front man of Gogol Bordello Eugene Hutz, bandura master Julian Kytasty, performer Susan Hwang with Marlon Cherry & Charlie Waters, pianist Anthony Coleman and Yara actors performing poems by Serhiy Zhadan, Ukraine’s leading poet, who is now in Kharkiv. “#StandwithUkraine" took place Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at the Ukrainian Museum 222 East 6th St in New York City.  

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event program

event photos

event press

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Press

During this evening in solidarity we heard the poems of Serhiy Zhadan, who today is in Kharkiv, which is heavily shelled by Russians. Especially moving was Susan Hwang’s performance of her song “Mushrooms of Donbas” that is based on a poem by Zhadan, as translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Olena Jennings read her own poem “My Ukraine.” Julian Kytasty, Bob Holman and Anthony Coleman performed “Truth and Lies,” [a 17th c song) which sounded very pertinent today. Eugene Hutz, founder and vocalist for the popular Gogol Bordello group, brought his own special optimism and belief in victory over the Russian invaders. At the end the performers and audience sang the Ukrainian National Anthem – “Ukraine’s Freedom Has Not Perished” [as translated by Patti Smith.] Nova Hazeta, March 10, 2022.

Eugene Hutz, the frontman of Gogol Bordello, belted out several high-energy songs, in both Ukrainian and English. As his long hair flew about, he furiously strummed his guitar… The Ukrainian-born Hutz, whose band got its start on the Lower East Side, has both Ukrainian and Roma ancestry. After the performance, The Village Sun asked him about the fierce fighting wracking his homeland – and how the outmanned Ukrainian have been more than holding their own against the invading Russians. “Of course, because they have cause,” he declared. “And those zombies, they don’t have a cause,” he said of the Russians. Lincoln Anderson, The Village Sun, March 3, 2022.

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photos by Pavlo Terekhov