Venezia, 8 May. (askanews) – The Ukrainian Pavilion project at the Venice Art Biennale 2026 addresses the issue of unmet security guaranteesfor which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1996, following the signing of the Budapest Memorandum two years earlier.
The Budapest Memorandum, 1994is a political agreement signed by Ukraine, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, under which Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon state in exchange for security assurances. The project also reflects on the fragility of peace and the resilience of the Ukrainian people.
At the center of the project Security Guarantees curated by Ksenia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak is the sculpture The Origami Deer by Zhanna Kadyrova The Origami Deer. In 2019 the work was installed in Yuvileynyi (Jubilee) Park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk regionon the site of a dismantled nuclear-capable Soviet Su-7 aircraft. The sculpture was placed on a plinth and was not designed to be transported.
In 2024, as the war front approached the cityZhanna Kadyrova and the NGO Museum Open for Renovation, together with a group of specialists and municipal workers from Pokrovsk, have evacuated. Leonid Marushchak, historian and co-curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion, was part of the initiative group.
The exhibition of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Arsenale of the Biennale Arte 2026 presents archival materials relating to the Budapest Memorandum, as well as video documentation of the sculpture’s evacuation and its journey to Venice, created in collaboration with Natalka Dyachenko, Pavel Sterec and Max Màslo. The sculpture is instead suspended from a crane mounted on a truck at the entrance to the Biennale Gardens. The sculpture’s suspended state symbolizes the uncertainty that characterizes the lives of Ukrainians today and serves as a metaphor for forced displacement.
The project is implemented with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, UNESCO, Sushko Philanthropy, ZAG, Nova Post, Ajax Systems, Avrora Multimarket, Agrosem. Media partners: Suspilne Kultura, Radio Kultura, Artslooker, The Kyiv Independent.
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