The Ukrainian Pavilion at the 2026 Biennale Accuses the Failure of Politics. Interview with the Curator

The Ukrainian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, titled "Security Guarantees," presents a pointed critique of failed international security policies through the work of artist Zhanna Kadyrova. Central to the pavilion is her sculpture "The Origami Deer" (2019), originally created in Pokrovsk from a Soviet jet that once carried nuclear weapons. After being evacuated from the front line in August 2024 and transported 6,000 kilometers across Europe to Venice, the work has transformed from a humanitarian gesture into a political artifact that embodies the collapse of diplomatic promises, particularly the Budapest Memorandum. Curator Ksenia Malykh explains that the pavilion does not offer a comforting representation of Ukraine but instead confronts viewers with the fragility of global security guarantees.

This pavilion matters because it reframes the role of national presentations at the Biennale, moving beyond identity representation to directly challenge European and international notions of protection and stability. By placing a physically evacuated object in the heart of Venice, the project forces audiences to question what security means amid ongoing war. The work uses contemporary art's unique capacity to materialize absence and absurdity, making visible the gap between diplomatic rhetoric and lived reality. It shifts the Biennale from a showcase into a transit point for a traumatized fragment of public space, accusing the Western world's comfortable illusion of safety.