Breathing the air of war
In February 2022, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the lives of millions of Ukrainians and reshaped every sphere of society. Alongside the struggle for survival, protecting Ukraine's cultural heritage became an urgent priority. Thousands of museum objects and artworks were evacuated across Europe, while museums, cultural institutions, and artists found new ways to preserve and share Ukraine's story beyond its borders.
Today, Ukrainian art is not only about being protected, it is also helping audiences across Europe engage with the history, identity, and human consequences of the Russian–Ukrainian war. Among European cities, Warsaw has become one of the key places where these stories continue to be preserved and shared.
Working out of Warsaw we have been looking at the impact and development of Ukranian art since the full scale invasion. In this article we have conversations with experts and curators together with examples from galleries showcasing ukraninan art in Warsaw.
What can art tell us about the Russian–Ukrainian war beyond the headlines? And what stories do these artworks carry as they travel across World?
The State of Ukrainian art: From invisible to impossible to ignore.
Ukrainian art did not start with the Russian invasion, but it forced the world to notice it.
Marta Czyż, polish art historian, curator and art critic based in Warsaw and Ewa Sułek, polish art historian, curator and writer currently based at the Freie Universität in Berlin point to 2014 and the Maidan Revolution as a turning point.
“Before 2014 there was literally no interest in Ukrainian art”, says Sułek.
And by 2022, “everyone became an expert of it”, says Czyż
The world needed the war to start noticing Ukrainian art, sad as it sounds this is unfortunately not only in the case of Ukraine, but also a global problem, Sułek points out.
War as a catalyst and a constraint
The war has dramatically increased visibility of Ukrainian art globally but also narrowed the way Ukrainian art is understood which is exclusively through the lens of war. The attention is positive, but the lens can be a limiting factor. In this sense Ukrainian artists will, whether they want it or not, become ambassadors for Ukraine, and the rest of the world will see their art with the backdrop of the war.
Even when Ukrainian artists are not explicitly depicting combat, war influences their work. Both Czyż and Sułek say that the war has become an unavoidable context for Ukrainian art rather than just a theme.
Marta Czyż also works as a representative director at The House of Meetings with History in Warsaw. (photo by Gustav S. Frisch)
"The artists don't have to directly talk about the war, but still they are breathing the same air, – the air of war."
Marta Czyż
In this sense the art is shaped by the war, but not necessarily defined by it.
The Ukranian art scene in Warsaw
Petro Vladimirov, founder and curator of TBA Gallery, Warsaw, 2026.
The streets of Warsaw led us to gallery TBA. Founded in September 2024 by Ukrainian architect and curator Petro Vladimirov, TBA – short for "To Be Announced" – is dedicated to bringing Ukrainian art to an international audience. Vladimirov sees the gallery's mission as building a bridge between cultures.
The war in Ukraine has become a turning point for how Ukrainian art is seen abroad. But TBA is not simply a space about war – it is a space where art born during wartime finds its voice.
Over the past two years, the gallery has regularly exhibited works by Ukrainian artists from temporarily occupied territories and those living in exile. Through their art, they reflect on the experience of war, sharing personal stories of loss, resilience, and displacement.
Presented in Warsaw, these works have helped international audiences better understand the human reality of Russia's war against Ukraine:
Vasyl Tkachenko
Born in Mariupol in 1995, Vasyl Tkachenko paints from memory – a memory of a city now under occupation. His works are fragments of a life interrupted: a glance, a childhood room, the quiet before everything changed. War, for him, is not a subject. It is a space he carries inside.
- Bild: Kuba Rodziewicz
Lada Nakonechna & Alicja Pakosz
In A Deal, Ukrainian artist Lada Nakonechna and Polish artist Alicja Pakosz explore what happens when survival becomes the only criterion for decisions.
A dialogue between two countries – about fragility, compromise, and the cost of endurance.
Kateryna Lysovenko
The very first exhibition at TBA asked a simple question: must wartime art only speak of death? Kateryna Lysovenko answered with bodies that long, give birth, and transform. Because the beginning of new life is also a path toward healing – and healing is what Ukraine needs.
To show one's experience on the international art scene is an attempt to say: thank you for what you are doing – and please try to understand. The art of Ukrainian artists today is not only a reflection on the war. It is proof that Ukrainian culture is alive, and refuses to disappear.
Shared Homes - Wspólne Domy
Over 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens have had to flee their homes since the full-scale invasion began, rebuilding their lives from scratch in a new country of residence.
Shared homes is an exhibition which explores what it means to feel at home through memories, relationships, everyday rituals, and a sense of safety rather than a physical place.
The exhibition is divided into six thematic rooms, each exploring a different aspect of home through collage, embroidery, sound, food, and ceramics.
This place demonstrates how art can communicate emotion, memory, and human connection in ways that traditional media cannot. The museum becomes a place of encounter: a shared home co-created by people with different experiences and life stories.
This Cat Was Drawn During the War
Located currently at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, this exhibition brings together works by artists reflecting on the experience of creating amid war and other moments of crisis.
The exhibition examines how art responds to violence, loss, displacement, and uncertainty. Each work carries a story that extends beyond its material form, serving as a testimony to lived experience, memory, and resilience. Together, these voices offer a multifaceted reflection on the realities of war and its lasting human impact.
War colors everything. It turns reality into a kind of hell, erasing emotion and hope, and ultimately destroying us as well.
War can be made visible through materials that once belonged to it–traces of lives, objects, and memories that remain.
Anna Lazar, the museum director, discusses the exhibition’s concept and Lada Nakonechna’s work, which reconstructs the tragedy of the Mariupol Drama Theatre using crystal beads. On March 16, 2022, Russian air strikes hit the building where civilians were sheltering. The word “CHILDREN” was written at the entrances, yet the attack still followed.
A part of the objects that have become history includes fragments of a chandelier from the Mariupol Drama Theatre, found by the artist. These shards were also described in a Russian museum as “a fragment of a crystal chandelier destroyed in spring 2022.” There was no mention of the destroyed theatre, the destroyed culture, or the destroyed lives.
Anna Lazar speaks about Lada Nakonechna’s bead “curtain” presented in Warsaw. As an example of conceptual art, each element of the work functions as a testimony to war.
Lada Nakonechna’s installation is composed of old crystal chandelier pendants found at flea markets. The work highlights the tragedy of the air strike on the Mariupol Drama Theatre on March 16, 2022, in which at least 600 people were killed.
Art as Identity and Collective Memory
Ukrainian contemporary art is about more than war, it is deeply concerned with identity, memory, and nationhood. Their work often speaks of a wider national experience rather than only individual stories. Ukrainian artists are documenting not only the war, but also what it means to be Ukrainian.
According to Czyż this has been the case at least since the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in November 2013 to February 2014
Decolonising the Art World
The war has exposed how Ukrainian culture was often overshadowed by Russia. And recognition of Ukrainian art is not only about visibility, but also about correcting historical misrepresentation.
Sułek points to museums revising labels and reclassifying artists previously identified as Russian.
In this sense the conversation around Ukrainian art has become part of a broader effort to decolonise cultural institutions and look at Ukraine independently.
Looking Beyond the War
Both experts hope Ukrainian artists will continue to receive attention after the conflict.
Sułek hopes artists will be invited in the future "because they are good artists" and not only because they come from a country at war.
"Ukrainian artists have a mission right now", says Czyż
For both Sułek and Czyż, the future challenge is ensuring that Ukrainian art remains visible not because of the war, but because of its artistic significance.
Ukranian art on the global scene
Open Group
Czyż’s first meeting with Ukrainian art was the art collective Open Group with the permanent members Yuri Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga.
Open Group are working a lot with collective practices and collective memory. This is their main goal. They use different media, and have made films, objects and installations.
In 2024 Czyż curated their exhibition “Repeat after me II” at the polish pavilion of the Biennale of Venice.
“Repeat after me II” is an audiovisual video installation. It’s a collective portrait of witnesses of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The videos presented were created in 2022 and 2024. All the protagonists are civilian refugees speaking of the war through the sounds of weapons they remember, then inviting the audience to repeat after them. The artists use a karaoke format. Yet here the accompaniment is not hit songs, it is shots, missiles, howling, and explosions, and the lyrics are descriptions of deadly firearms. This is the soundtrack of the war.
“They really think about the collectivity and about what collective memory is, not only their personal memory, but the memory of the whole nation. And I believe that their messages are understandable and universal.”, says Czyż
The piece was very well received and has been exhibited in many other places since.
Ukraine: Land of the Brave
A team of the Ukrainian artists in collaboration with partners created an immersive exhibition «Ukraine: Land of the Brave» in order to consolidate the unity of the world community in the fight against Russian military and cultural expansion.
At that time, part of the Ukrainian territories had already been liberated, and the world saw the consequences and all the horror that the "russian peace" carries with it. Photographers, journalists, ordinary citizens film and save testimonies and capture the moments of military actions in the frame, in order to create an evidence base, testimonies against the aggressor. Images at the exhibition display much of the destruction in Chernihiv and Mariupol, soldiers and children of war, and burials.
Immersive Shevchenko: Soul of Ukraine
The exhibition Immersive Shevchenko: Soul of Ukraine carried a special significance for Ukraine and its international solidarity. The goal of this exhibition was to combine Ukrainian traditions and modern technology, to rethink and present the work of Ukrainian genius Taras Shevchenko in a new and interesting format.
The ehxibition was held in Toronto, Winnipeg, San-Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland. The exhibit had raised over $200,000 from viewings in Toronto, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston, the funds from which went towards aiding the Ukraine and the needs of its people.
Indomitable Ukraine
Another exhibition launched in London highlighted a modern, highly technological war and served to honor the international volunteers who died defending Ukraine.
"Indomitable Ukraine is an important work to convey the image of the Russian-Ukrainian war to a foreign audience. After all, it is one thing to read about it in the news and quite another to directly touch its material part and see people who fight for Ukraine." - Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
The event drew more than 30 ambassadors from the G7, the EU, and other nations, as well as members of the British Parliament, politicians, the media, volunteers, highlighting the power of art in uniting a international front against the war.
Art in numbers
Museums across Poland, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, and other countries have provided safe storage, conservation, and exhibition spaces for artworks evacuated from areas threatened by the Russian-Ukrainian war. Although the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine has not published official country-by-country statistics for security reasons, publicly available estimates indicate that Poland received the largest share of evacuated museum objects, reflecting its central role in preserving Ukraine's cultural heritage
We can see a strong presence of Ukrainian art within the cultural institutions of Warsaw and beyond. Poland has become engaged in creating spaces to showcase Ukrainian art, positioning itself as a frontline narrator of the war in Ukraine.
One could argue that culture and art are not a priority during war. But we believe, that now is precisely the time to show it through museums and galleries in other countries. Time to bring to the foreign viewer an art born of reinterpretation, pain, and the experience of death that always stands just behind one's shoulder.
Art is not an attempt to escape. It is an attempt to be present. Present in the space of the European viewer, so that they understand how art is made by war.
We’re grateful for the insightful conversations and contributions by
Marta Czyż Ewa Sułek Petro Vladimirov Ivanna Berchak Anna Łazar
U-Jazdowski Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Państwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne w Warszawie
Article by
Zharska Oleksandra Kasprzyk Iwan Frisch S. Gustav Koval Tamila Musianovych Julia