Ukraine Pavilion to Spotlight Evacuated Sculpture at Venice Biennale

Ukraine’s national pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale will centre on a relocated sculpture and archival material addressing international security commitments, with organisers framing the presentation as a response to the country’s wartime experience.

Titled Security Guarantees, the project refers to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances from the US, UK and Russia. Pavilion representatives say the exhibition is intended to question how such guarantees have functioned in practice since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The main work is Origami Deer, a concrete sculpture by Zhanna Kadyrova first installed in 2019 in a park in Pokrovsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. As fighting moved closer to the area, the work was removed in 2024 by the artist, local officials and technicians, and transported to safer locations. For Venice, plans call for the sculpture to be shown lifted by a crane and held above ground near the lagoon waterfront, with final siting still under discussion. Curators say the suspended display is meant to signal instability, forced movement and the condition of being uprooted.

Inside the pavilion at the Arsenale, the exhibition will include documents related to the Budapest Memorandum and a multi-channel film following the sculpture’s evacuation route across Ukraine and into Europe. A separate documentary on the removal of the work will also be screened. Before arriving in Venice, the sculpture is scheduled to appear in several European cities including Warsaw, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Brussels and Paris.

The sculpture’s original base incorporated parts of a dismantled Soviet-era military aircraft. Curators Ksenia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak are organising the pavilion with the NGO Museum Open for Renovation. Ukrainian officials presenting the project in Kyiv described the pavilion as part of the country’s cultural diplomacy efforts.

The 61st Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026.