Russia’s dominion over Eastern Europe — first as the Russian Empire, later as the Soviet Union — ushered in many of the same colonial practices as Western empires: the suppression of local languages, the persecution of the local intelligentsia, and education reforms that prioritized the metropol’s view of culture and history. Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian art was simply labeled as ‘Russian’. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, artists across Eastern Europe are increasingly reclaiming their identities and carving their own paths.