Abstract Submitted to the Association for Art History Conference 2027¶

Oleh Shynkarenko has submitted an abstract to the Association for Art History Annual Conference 2027, which will take place at the University of Exeter, UK, on 7–9 April 2027. The proposed paper, "Red Flags on Venus: Imperial Visual Grammar in Soviet and Post-Soviet Science Fiction by Ukrainian Authors", was submitted to session 22, "Beyond Imperial Gazes: Postcolonialisms across Post-Soviet Art Histories".

The paper starts from an illustration to Volodymyr Vladko's novel Argonauts of the Universe, in which a red Soviet flag rises over a rock on Venus as two armed cosmonauts salute it. It compares Soviet Ukrainian book illustrations with the covers of post-1991 Russian-language military science fiction by Ukraine-born authors, including Fedor Berezin and the Kharkiv duo Alexander Zorich, and argues that the same imperial visual formula of flag, uniformed heroes, weapons and conquered horizon survived the end of the USSR and was recoded into Russian national imperialism.

The results of the selection are expected after the call for papers closes on 25 October 2026.