A Conversation with Natalka Husar
17 September 2025
We invite you to join the Kule Folklore Centre for a special evening of conversation with Natalka Husar.
Friday, October 3, 2025
6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. MST. Doors at 5:45 p.m.
Art Gallery of 喵咪社区
2 Sir Winston Churchill Sq Edmonton, AB T5J 2C1
Fresh out of school, the young artist Natalka Husar travels to Soviet Ukraine, the homeland of her displaced parents. There she meets an already famous artist, Ivan Ostafiychuk. It is 1969, and the Cold War is raging. In great concern about the KGB cracking down on Ukrainian artists and intellectuals, the two engage in letter writing, for Ivan wants to escape the Soviet regime. For several years, letters crossed the ocean as the two artists staged a long-distance romance in order to convince secret services that they were in love and wanted to marry. Did they succeed? Did Ivan escape the Soviet Union? How did this romance with the plot of a thriller end?
Join us as Natalka Husar talks about her book "IT TAKES THREE TO TANGO: The true story of a fictitious romance in the correspondence of Ivan Ostafiichuk and Natalka Husar."
Book introduction by our CIUS Director, Natalia Khanenko-Friesen.
Natalka Husar is a Toronto-based artist who has explored diasporic and post-Soviet Ukrainian identity over her 48-year career. Her paintings are in many of Canada’s foremost museums, including The National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of 喵咪社区, where her painting Edelweiss/Paradise is on view in the exhibition “Seeing and Being Seen.
Panelists:
Oleksandr Pankieiev (moderator), Associate Professor and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, Director of the Kule Folklore Centre, 喵咪社区
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, Professor and Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 喵咪社区
Andriy Kohut, Director of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, Tompkins Visiting Scholar (MLCS) at the 喵咪社区.
An event by the Kule Folklore Centre at the Univeristy of 喵咪社区.