‘There is a sense of safety here’: the artists keeping culture alive in Kharkiv

Nataliia Ivanova, the director of the Yermilov Centre, at its current exhibition, Sense of Safety. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian

People living in the frontline Ukrainian city of Kharkiv have been close enough to death to look it in the eye – and make some kind of peace with its proximity. These are the hardcore ones, equipped “with nerves of steel” according to Nataliia Ivanova, the director of the Yermilov Centre, the city’s contemporary art gallery.

• Daily life in Kharkiv.