“In these controversial times, how should we deal with truth?”
© 2025 EPFL/ Daryl Jeker
Oleksandr Sushynskyi is a Ukrainian researcher, art historian, and theorist in 20th century art. He was invited to conduct his research at EPFL’s Laboratory of Experimental Museology (eM+) in 2022 as part of the Scholars At Risk (SAR) program. His research focuses on blurring the boundary between truth and fake.
Sushynskyi’s life and research had already been impacted by conflict in 2014, when Donetsk, where he is from, was the first city taken by Russia, leading him to move to Lviv in western Ukraine for two years. After this, he went to Chernivtsi, a small city on the border with Romania, when a gallery invited him to work as a curator. He spent seven years there working on art projects, organizing festivals, and giving lectures on the history of 20th century art. When war came to Ukraine again in 2022, he applied to complete his master’s at EPFL and came to Switzerland through the SAR program.
“When I first came to the lab it was amazing to see all the facilities, all these techniques, all the screens,” Sushynskyi says. “As a humanities guy, I don’t use these technical parts of the laboratory.”
The research he proposed for his time at EPFL was to create the world’s first digital archive dedicated to counterfactual artistic practices. He worked on a database with hundreds counterfactual artistic projects and fake biographies of artists that was developed by a Ukrainian group of designers.
“My idea was to find artistic projects from all over the world that deal with the notion of fake, of true, of mythology,” he says. “In these very controversial times we live in now, it’s important to look at this issue of truth. How should we deal with truth in politics, in history, and identification as well? How can it be elaborated on, or challenged, or dismantled through artistic practices?”
While he estimates that only around 5% of projects in the archive are from Ukraine, he says that this topic of counter-factuality and post-truth arc is very inherited in Ukraine and other post-soviet countries who were under totalitarian regimes, because all these archives were hidden from people. “My observation is that the more authoritarian country, the more troubles it has with the truth. So in that way, my work has a connection with Ukraine.”
Sushynskyi says that one of his favorite parts of studying at EPFL was his access to the Rolex Library, where he was able to scan hundreds of books that he could use for his archive of counterfactual art.
The realization of a dream
“I requested hundreds of books from the library, which has connections with other libraries in Switzerland, and I couldn’t believe that it was possible to secure all these books, albums, and catalogs, and that they could all be delivered here for free. It was like the realization of a dream.”
Now that he has finished his master’s at EPFL, he is considering a PhD in the future if he can find funding. He also hopes to one day make his digital library into a physical one. “I have this dream to establish a physical archive and make a library that would be completely open for researchers, art historians, writers and more.”
He is also planning to organize a music festival of 20th century music and contemporary classical composers in Zurich with some colleagues next year, as music is a passion for Sushynskyi.
Of his time at EPFL, he says that “it was a great pleasure and an amazing experience for me.”
Scholars At Risk (SAR) is an international network of 665 universities in 49 countries that aims to protect refugee and at-risk academics, prevent attacks on the scientific community, and promote academic freedom. In the past two years alone, 354 temporary positions were created at member universities around the world.
EPFL created the first position for a member of “Academics for Peace” from Turkey in 2019, followed by two more positions for female scholars from Afghanistan, and others from Ukraine and Russia who were threatened and forced to leave their countries because of their research, their ideas, and their place in society or armed conflict. A total of eight temporary positions were created during the period 2019 - 2024 at CDH and other schools on Campus. This was made possible thanks to the financial support of EPFL+ Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Program for Scholars At Risk, CDH, and the schools and labs involved. CDH Deputy Director Gabriela Tejada is the SAR delegate at EPFL, working in collaboration with the Office of International Affairs of the Presidency.