Traditions are our identity: who our ancestors were, who we are and who our descendants will be. It is not always about memory or the distant past and not about something immeasurable. After all, for traditions to remain alive rather than become «museum exhibits», they must not only be preserved but also continually reinterpreted and adapted to contemporary realities. It was this aspiration that gave rise to the Vertep 2025 project – an artistic initiative that brought together seemingly incompatible elements: the Ukrainian Christmas tradition, Kazimir Malevich’s avant-garde, performance, design, and the collective creative work of teachers and students.
The project was implemented by the Department of Visual Design and Art, Lviv Polytechnic, in collaboration with Zenyk Art Gallery and the Ukrainian brand YaVereta. The author of the concept and the project curator is Associate Professor Roksoliana Kvasnytsia, and the coordinator is Professor Viktor Shtets. They were the ones who organized the work and involved students in all stages of the project.
Vertep 2025 was formed within the framework of cooperation with ZAG not simply as a decorative interpretation of tradition, but as a deeply thought-out concept – a synthesis of sacred narrative, bird symbolism and Suprematist geometry, which transforms the classical structure of the nativity scene into a conceptual installation.
The key idea was to reinterpret the traditional Ukrainian nativity scene through the prism of Kazimir Malevich’s avant-garde art. The project represented the nativity characters using bird archetypes, with each figure assigned a bird according to its symbolic meaning: angels as doves, shepherds as larks, the Cossack as a falcon, the devil as a raven, death as an owl, the kings as peacocks, Joseph and Mary as storks, and Herod as a rooster.
– It was important for us to show birds not as conventional symbols, but as full-fledged heroes that reflect a combination of opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, human and sacred. We did not seek to associate specific birds with only negative traits – each image has both bright and dark sides, and this ambiguity was very important for us.
Another important aspect: 2025 has been declared the year of Malevich. Both in Ukraine and in Poland it is held under his auspices, in particular through the resumption of the award of the Kazimir Malevich Prize to Ukrainian artists. We wanted to join this landmark event and pay tribute to Malevich in our own way. The concept for interpreting images for installations grew out of Suprematism: we did not copy it, but deliberately drew on this avant-garde movement to honour the artist and his legacy, explains the project curator.
