Ukraine’s highest state award for culture and arts, the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, also known as Shevchenko Award, has announced the winners of its 2021 edition.
The award holders were named during the online stream on March 9, marking the 207th anniversary of the birth of Shevchenko, the iconic Ukrainian poet and national symbol.
The Shevchenko prize in the Literature category went to author Oksana Lutsyshyna for the novel “Ivan and Feba.” Published in 2019, the book follows Ukraine’s transit from the Soviet times to gaining independence through the lives of two title characters.
“It is a very lively novel that touches on our history,” Tamara Gundorova, literature historian and a member of the award’s committee, said as she presented the prize.
Writer and journalist Stanislav Aseyev was awarded for his book “In Isolation,” in the Opinion Journalism, Journalism category. Aseyev’s book documents the first months of the Russian occupation of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in 2014.
“This author wrote and writes about what others were silent about,” Iryna Slavinska, another member of the committee and producer at Radio Culture, said during the ceremony.
Filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych and production designer Vladlen Odudenko received a prize in the Cinema Art category, for the post-war drama “Atlantis,” one of the most acclaimed Ukrainian films of recent years.
“Atlantis” spotlights a veteran who suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder and tries to rebuild his life in near-future Ukraine after it came victorious in Russia’s war. The film was also Ukraine’s nominee for the 93rd Academy Awards, known as Oscars, in the Best Foreign Language Film category but didn’t make it into the long list.
Read more: How ‘Atlantis’ director made Ukraine’s most awarded film against Russia’s war
Internationally-acclaimed photographer Borys Mykhailov won the prize for his project “Temptation of Death” for Visual Art. Known for revealing and sometimes provoking images, Mykhailov first exhibited “Temptation of Death” in Berlin in 2019. The project features 150 photo diptychs that combine photographs of a crematorium in Kyiv and other unexpected images, addressing eternal issues like censorship, death, time and history.
The team behind the “Ukho” music agency — head Oleksandra Andrusyk, co-founder Yevhen Shymalskyi and executive producer Kateryna Sula — won the award in the Music Art category for their live concerts “Voice Architecture,” recorded at unusual locations such as museums and cinemas.
The play “Verba,” based on the three-act poem “The Forest Song” by iconic Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka, won in the Theater Art category. The jury awarded the play’s director Serhii Masloboishchykov, costume designer Nataliia Rudiuk and composer Oleksandr Behma.
This year, because of the COVID-19 restrictions, the announcement of the winners moved online. But the award ceremony will be held later in May, at its usual location – the town of Kaniv in Cherkasy Oblast, some 140 kilometers south from Kyiv, where Shevchenko was buried in 1861.
The winners were as usual picked by the Taras Shevchenko Prize committee, which includes 18 prominent Ukrainians working in culture and art.
In 2020, the Shevchenko Prize winners received Hr 200,000 (around $7,217) each. The amount of prize money granted to the 2021 award holders will be published on the president’s website soon.
In May 2021, Shevchenko National Prize will celebrate its 60th anniversary.
