How Ukrainian Artists Are Grappling with the War

Imagine a table laden with loaves of fluffy bread, sliced and seemingly still warm, only to find that they are in fact made of stone. Palianytsia, meaning “bread” in Ukrainian, was the title of Zhanna Kadyrova’s 2022 pop-up exhibition with Galleria Continua in Venice. There, she showed a series of river stones shaped and cut like bread (when combined with salt, a traditional symbol of hospitality in Ukraine). Yet, at the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the word palianytsia, which Russians struggle to pronounce, became a signifier of something else. “It became a shibboleth, distinguishing friend from enemy,” said Kadyrova. The artist gave all of the sales proceeds from the show to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, supporting artists on the front lines.

Despite the war beginning in 2014 with the Russians annexing and occupying Crimea, the art scenes in most Ukrainian cities remained vibrant and thriving, with the capital Kyiv a lively hub for many of the country’s artists. That all changed in 2022 with the full-scale invasion, which caused the complete shutdown of galleries and institutions alongside a mass exodus of artists. Now, three years later, spaces have slowly reopened and many Ukrainians have returned.

The past two weeks have seen critical developments related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, including an astonishing showdown between Ukrainian president Zelensky and U.S. president Trump in the Oval Office. Now, the U.S. has suspended all military aid to Ukraine. As the international situation shifts rapidly, how are Ukrainian artists faring three years into the full-scale invasion?

Some, like Kadyrova, are dealing with these themes in their work: For the past three years, Kadyrova has engaged exclusively with the idea of war. Having initially fled Kyiv for the Transcarpathian region in west Ukraine, the artist’s studio is now, again, based in the capital city. She told Artsy, “I have made a principled decision not to leave for any residencies because I want to remain at the center of events and witness everything firsthand. I even have a moratorium with my gallery on selling pre-war works to ensure that people’s attention stays focused on the war.”

It’s not just artists: Institutions in the region have also taken bold steps. Björn Geldhof, artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre, explained that in early 2022, the private museum made a “shift from institutional work to almost activist work…we understood how much impact we could have through culture,” he said. In his work as a curator, he has sought to spread the message of Ukraine’s struggle and focus the world’s attention on its suffering. For instance, Geldhof curated a touring exhibition of Kadyrova’s work, which traveled to Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague in 2024, and included the sculpture Shots (2022–23), a series of tiles punctured by gunshots.

In the museum’s current exhibition “PinchukArtCentre Prize 2025,” work by 20 shortlisted Ukrainian artists aged 35 or younger is on view. Included is Tamara Turliun’s Shkurynka (Crust) (2025), a series of sculptures that double as giant cocoons with small surface tears and perforations, evoking a sense of transformative metamorphosis in defiance of the violence bearing down on Ukrainians. “It’s through [artists] that we have a voice, and it’s their voice that we try to amplify,” said Geldhof.

A special recognition in the show honors Veronika Kozhushko, an artist who tragically died in a Russian missile strike on the eastern city of Kharkiv. Such veneration keeps the memory of Kozhushko’s work alive, with the institution showing its solidarity with and respect for artists who exist in particularly dangerous conditions and yet continue to dedicate themselves to their art. Geldhof underlines that while Kyiv remains “a lively city, I was recently in Kharkiv [which] is much harder…it’s really on the edge of life and death…the urgency to produce, to make, is extremely high.”

Though an estimated 7 million Ukrainians have fled, men aged between 18 and 60 cannot leave the country under martial law. Lina Romanukha, a cultural manager, artist, and curator still based in Kyiv, told Artsy that many male artists have consequently remained in Ukraine, but that there was a “huge movement abroad of female artists because of safety measures.”

This movement, in some cases, has been going on since before 2022. For example, multimedia and performance artist Maria Kulikovska, who was born in Kerch, Crimea, was displaced by Russia’s annexation of the region in 2014. At that time, she had an exhibition in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, where the Russian military destroyed her sculptures. At the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, she moved to Linz, Austria, for a residency. Her subsequent exhibition “My Body is a Battlefield” at Francisco Carolinum acknowledged the tension in her situation. The show included casts of her own body, described as “the battlefield in which often ambivalent emotions emerge and wrestle with each other.”

Ukrainian artist Rita Maikova Zaporozhets was in Sri Lanka when the 2022 invasion of Ukraine started. Since then, the painter has lived for stints in London and Madrid before settling in Barcelona with her husband and 1-year-old baby (she showed Artsy the view of Gaudi’s Sagrada Família from her balcony over a Zoom call). By stark contrast, in her hometown of Kherson, where her 68-year-old father still lives, Maikova said that her “house is situated just in front of the river, on the front line where the Russians are bombing. They destroyed the roof, so [my father] rebuilt it and continues to live there.”

Maikova’s career is taking her around the world: Her recent exhibition at Volery Gallery in Dubai, “Inner Guide,” included the oil-on-canvas painting Feminine secret circle (2024). It’s a surreal scene depicting mercurial figures dancing at night in a circle reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s The Dance (1909), suggesting the adaptive power of people and the spirit of coming together despite the darkness. Later this year she will show with Kristin Hjellegjerde in West Palm Beach. And yet, Maikova said, “After nearly three years of a brutal war, I’m still renting a studio in Kyiv. I haven’t been there in all this time, yet I can’t seem to let it go.”

According to artists there, the art scene in Kyiv is burgeoning once again. For example, artist Polina Verbytska recently returned after initially moving with her family to Lithuania. She told Artsy, “Even before the war, I believed that the art scene in Kyiv was one of the most interesting in Europe—characterized by high-quality, powerful art that is often created by the artists themselves without any institutional support. And now, after three years of war, I see no decline.” In emigration, she mostly focused on creating drawings and small sculptures, including I remember (2023), in which a fleshy figure is carved in half and mutilated by a splintered piece of wood. Now back in Kyiv, Verbytska has converted her studio on Oles Honchar Street into a small gallery. She highlighted how in Kyiv, “some people left, some returned, but life is bustling, and people cannot think solely about politics.”

While many cities and art institutions in eastern Ukraine have been devastated by war, others in the west, including Lviv’s Jam Factory Art Centre, have been less impacted. “Being located in the western part of the country, we have less frequent missile or drone attacks,” said Bozhena Pelenska, director of the Jam Factory. Nonetheless, Pelenska said that its programming still acknowledges the “high level of vulnerability in society, [people] who went through the battles or attacks as civilians.” As such, she focuses on themes of trauma and resistance as a response to the urgency of current events.