Ukrainian Memory Spaces and Nuclear Technology: The Musealization of Chornobyl's Disaster

The Chornobyl disaster has been the subject of various memory strategies, ranging from texts to images to memorials, from state-centred to highly individualized narrations. This essay discusses a specific local visual strategy: the musealization of Chornobyl as it has been implemented in the land of Chornobyl. It takes as its focus Ukraine's National Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv, assesses its place in Chornobyl's visual history, and investigates into the representations of nuclear technology within the Ukrainian memory space. Moreover, it considers perspectives for developing a locally informed approach that gives transnational industrial disaster research a sense of place and space.