Ukrainian gallerists on their new Miami space

Nearly two years ago, the owners of Voloshyn Gallery were stranded in Miami when their home country of Ukraine was invaded by Russia. Now, after opening their first permanent location outside Kyiv in the city’s Allapattah neighbourhood, they are taking part in their first Miami Art Week as locals.Max and Julia Voloshyn, who founded their Kyiv gallery in 2016, travelled to Miami for the 2021 Miami Art Week to run concurrent stands at the NADA and Untitled Art fairs. After contracting Covid-19, they extended their stay and used the extra time in the city to host a pop-up exhibition in Allapattah centred on work by Ukrainian artists, much of it dealing with politics and the country’s ongoing conflict with Russia. The show turned out to be timelier than anyone could have predicted: weeks after it opened in February 2022, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and the Voloshyns were unable to return home.With their Kyiv gallery put to use as a bomb shelter, the Voloshyns stayed in Miami, where they held several more pop-ups and organised phone drives in support of Ukraine; the great community response helped them decide to open a permanent foothold in the city. This October, they unveiled a space in a 1,400 sq. ft warehouse next door to Andrew Reed Gallery, relocating nearby with their young child. “In Miami, we are quite unique,” Max says. “There were no Eastern European galleries or artists at all. Our main goal is to create a dialogue between Eastern European and American and Latin American artists.”This week, Voloshyn Gallery takes part in the Untitled Art fair with a stand dedicated to works by the Polish artist Karol Radziszewski and the Ukrainian artist Lesia Khomenko. Their gallery is also hosting a new show, Further than Light or Language (until 9 January). Named for a line in the poem The Cave by Paul Tran, it features works by the Dallas-based artist Erika Jaeggli and Sana Shakhmuradova, who lives in Kyiv.