With a sculpture saved from war, artist Zhanna Kadyrova is drawing attention to the precarious situation in Ukraine during the Venice Biennale.
The Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova has long since sharpened her artistic tools for the conflicts fomented by Russia. She usually uses clear and captivating images Observations from their war-torn country.
Kadyrova has exhibited several times at the Venice Art Biennale, and this year she will represent Ukraine there. There is hardly any other cultural event where your art can reach such a large, international audience as it does there. In 2024 she showed an organ with pipes made from Russian bullets in Venice. The blown-up rocket heads crowned the instrument like a baroque ornament. Beautiful and terrible.
At the Venice Biennale, which opens in May, Zhanna Kadyrova, born in 1981, will bring an older sculpture of hers from Ukraine to the lagoon – and hang it from a crane. As a metaphor for the country’s continued precarious situation during the war.
Her paper-folded origami deer from 2019, a 3-D print made of concrete, originally stood in the public Leontovych Park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast. The embattled city lies on the war front and is an important railway and logistics hub.
What “security guarantees” actually?
In order to protect Kadyrova’s “The Origami Deer” from destruction caused by the Russian war of aggression, the sculpture was dismantled in 2024 and transported across Ukraine. When it hangs from the crane in Venice from May, the entire installation will be entitled “Safety Guarantees”.
This is what Kadyrova is referring to Budapest Memorandum of 1994which was signed by Ukraine, Great Britain, the USA and Russia, among others. At that time, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal and signed documents promising security. This was not guaranteed, as we know today.
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