These Artist-Designed T-Shirts Help Ukrainians on the Ground

Like many of us confronted with news of the war in Ukraine, Dorian Grinspan’s first reaction was horror, quickly followed by an urge to help. In lieu of donating to a large global organization, the founder and editor of Out of Order, an arts and culture publication, felt he could make the most impact by reaching out to people on the ground, which eventually led him to the activists Sofiia Lapina and Yura Dvizhon, who run UKRAINEPRIDE.

“Just six months prior, they were organizing rave parties across a bustling Kharkiv,” Grinspan notes. “Now, the nascent grassroots organization coordinates search and rescue operations, funds relocation initiatives for families in need as well as peer to peer assistance for food, necessities, and more.”

Starting today, Grinspan is supporting UKRAINEPRIDE’s work with a charitable T-shirt sale in collaboration with the artists Anne Imhoff, Glenn Ligon, Deborah Kass, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Raul de Nieves, Karl Holmqvist, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Ugo Rondinone, Francesco Vezzoli, and Sarah Sze. “We gave each artist a blank canvas—in this case a blank T shirt,” Grinspan tells W. “They all stayed really true to their practice, which I think is really beautiful.”

The T-shirts, which feature designs that range from Imhoff’s expressive line drawings to text works by Ligon and Tiravanija, retail for $40 each and will be available in unlimited quantities, but only through July 4th on the Out of Order website.

The timing of the sale, which coincides with Pride celebrations around the world, felt right to Grinspan for many reasons: “There’s something that has to be said about the media cycle and attention span. There’s less coverage, there are a lot of other issues that come up. There’s a lot going on right now,” he says. “But it’s important to keep in mind that these things, even if we’re not talking about them as much, aren’t going away.”