2026-03-12
Just over two weeks ago, on 24th February, marked the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. How is the new reality in which the world has found itself since then being portrayed in cultural institutions in Poland and abroad?
Polish institutions have already hosted several exhibitions devoted to Ukrainian heritage that has been saved from destruction. These include several presentations of Maria Prymachenko's works in Warsaw and the comprehensive exhibition ‘In the Eye of the Storm. Modernism in Ukraine’ at the Museum of Art in Łódź, which opened in 2025.
These exhibitions gave us the opportunity to see objects that might otherwise have been looted. According to the Polish Press Agency (PAP), citing the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, as many as 1.7 million works of art have been stolen from Ukraine since Russia's attack in 2022.
However, artworks are not the only exhibits that find their way into galleries and museums in Ukraine-themed exhibitions.
Recently, we have been seeing initiatives that have brought objects brought straight from the front line to the forefront.
On the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine, the Museum of Ukraine was opened in the exhibition space Berlin Story Bunker, where we can find, among other things, the wreckage of a car hit by a Russian drone. At another German cultural institution, Lothringer13 in Munich, we can take a close look at items of soldiers' equipment, while reading transcripts of their intercepted personal telephone conversations.
Although the documentation of armed conflicts is commonly associated primarily with the medium of photography, many contemporary curators are opting for alternative ways of depicting war. It is a fact that many war photographs have had a huge impact on public opinion; one need only mention the documentation of the Vietnam War attributed to Nick Ut (‘Napalm Girl’). However, contact with contemporary war artefacts, such as those presented in Berlin and Munich, can give the contemporary public a broader and more intimate understanding of the ongoing crisis, which is impossible to convey through two-dimensional media such as photography or film.