The second volume presents the wealth of Ukrainian work over the course of five decades. It begins in the nineteen-seventies, at the moment when the country's visual art began to publicly express its own language, and concludes with the war that engulfs it now.

For centuries Ukraine has been continuously fighting for its own identity, language, freedom and borders. The eastern part joined the then-forming Soviet Union after the revolution of 1917-18, while the west was joined by military force in 1939, and the republic went through a long period of eradicated national identity and the formation of new images, symbols and propaganda. Old narratives were destroyed, historical facts manipulated, and those who did not share the new ideology eliminated or silenced. When the Soviet Union fell, independence was declared on 24 August 1991, and a new stage of restoration of a lost identity began.