Kharkiv’s art collective Tvorche Nezhyt (TN, literally “Creative Undead”) burst onto Ukraine’s underground map as something between a nomadic gallery and a frank utopia — a zone with no approved curators, no selection committees, no “correct” names. Its only program is an open stage where anyone brave enough to risk an idea can show work. That radical openness has turned TN into a new emblem of Kharkiv’s counter-culture in wartime. Art critic Ulyana Krucha wrote about the phenomenon for the Ukrainian art platform Artslooker.
Atmospherically, TN’s members recall the early-2000s “neformaly” — teenagers dodging the system in back alleys, blasting punk rock and cobbling an aesthetic from the rubble of someone else’s rules. That explosive mix of naïveté and cheek still works, letting the crew remain a living meme of permission-free freedom. War has only sharpened the “romance of defiance”: a frontline city is the perfect backdrop for their ironic, slightly hooligan creative charge.
In spring 2023 TN was literally born to the sound of incoming shells: Kharkiv had been dark for a year, its street-lights dead, university basements doubling as bomb shelters and rehearsal rooms. A small crew of painters and poets plotted a two-day festival and gave it the throwaway title “Nezhyt” — a one-day head cold. The joke, meant as cover in case of failure, became the starting point of a permanent art community.
TN’s debut manifesto arrived on 1 April 2023: a performance-exhibition whose carnival-sized frame was captured in a short film. The clip, since screened at festivals, charms audiences with raw, garage-aesthetic romance: bleak, near-empty streets and a crowd of youngsters carrying photos as if they were hauling hope itself back into town.
The roster has morphed almost as fast as the locations of its street actions. Pixel-artist Magran Tata, poet Mariya Kvitma, filmmaker Vero Yuzepchuk, painter Yuliya Krapka, designer Yuliya Yakovenko, and multidisciplinary artist El form the current core, constantly joined by newcomers “infected” with creative freedom. TN has no hierarchy: the virus spreads through conversation, friendship, shared murals and sudden film nights.
The first sizeable shows became possible thanks to a Cec Art Link grant — ₴40 000 that financed a half-forgotten basement on Pushkinskyi (now Nimeckyi) Descent. Ironically, legends of the Kharkiv School of Photography and local underground romantics had worked there since the 1970s. TN merely repainted the walls and opened with “Native Black,” fourteen national artists re-imagining Malevich’s square.
Events rotated every week-and-a-half: workshops, screenings, charity auctions for Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Crowds ranged from humanities students to local white trash, cramming narrow corridors, yet freedom had a price. Noisy nights, an aluminium-can-clogged toilet, and curfew finally forced TN to seek a new roof; the building’s concierge proved tougher than any art critic.
The exit appeared in DRUK, a cultural-civic center launched in 2023 inside an old print shop. Founder Olha Sytnyk dreamt of a venue “without institutional borders,” where every curator is self-appointed. Magran showed up to the first meeting and never left: Tvorche Nezhyt became DRUK’s first resident and one of the hub’s main adrenaline pumps.
A former press hall on the second floor — imperial seals on the walls, 1990s graffiti, pre-war rave stickers — turned out to be TN’s ideal topography. Since then open calls have pulled artists from Poltava, Lviv, Odesa; exhibitions like “Wormwood” and “Native Black — Reload” gained professional polish, and taxi radios mention DRUK as often as the city-size market “Barabashovo.” The center itself is blooming: a theatre lab, a sound studio, even a mini-library of comics have sprung up beside TN.
Today the route of this “creative virus” remains unpredictable: TN might expand into an international network of underground residencies, or uproot again the moment instinct points to a new corridor of freedom. Either way, DRUK has become their reboot point — the spot where Kharkiv’s underground escapes the “time loop” and launches a fresh wave, powered by a wild art virus and a boundless liberty that breaks walls faster than printing presses once rolled out newsprint.
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