Ukraine

More than 30 years have passed since Ukraine committed to eliminate the nuclear weapons remaining on its territory after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum (1994) is a political agreement signed by Ukraine, the US, the UK 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.

In 2019, Zhanna Kadyrova created the concrete sculpture Deer from the Origami series for a public park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, on the site of a dismantled Soviet jet. In a few years the work has become part of the city’s everyday landscape. In August 2024, as the front line neared Pokrovsk and civilians began evacuating, Kadyrova, Leonid Marushchak, and a team dismantled the sculpture and relocated it to safety. In 2025, the Deer travelled over 3,000 km to Venice on the open bed of a truck, arriving in a “suspended state”: a heavy concrete object evoking paper, both resilient and exposed, mirroring the uncertainty familiar to Ukrainians today. The project unfolds in two locations: the Deer installed in public space, and a multi-channel video installation in the Arsenale documenting its journey through Ukraine and Europe.