Ukrainian artist duo Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk present their exhibition *Pedagogies of War* at ArtReview, featuring four film installations that explore how digital media shapes perceptions of the Ukraine war. Works include *You Shouldn’t Have to See This* (2024), showing Ukrainian children sleeping after returning from Russian captivity; *The Wanderer* (2022), where the artists pose as fallen soldiers; *Open World* (2025), following a teenager remotely controlling a military robot dog; and *We Didn’t Start this War* (2026), depicting mundane Kyiv street scenes. The exhibition avoids graphic violence, instead focusing on the emotional distance and ambiguous responses provoked by screen-based imagery.
The exhibition matters because it offers a nuanced artistic counterpoint to news media’s saturation with violent war imagery, prompting viewers to reflect on their own role in processing trauma and empathy through screens. By staging everyday life amid conflict, Khimei and Malashchuk highlight how war becomes normalized in the background of civilian existence, raising critical questions about passive consumption of conflict and the ethics of representation in contemporary visual culture.