A powerful evening at the opening of The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet by Zhanna Kadyrova at The Ukrainian Museum in New York.
Through sculpture, photography, embroidery, film, and video installation, Kadyrova reflects on loss, displacement, resilience, identity, and renewal in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Her practice brings together personal experience and the broader realities of war, examining how violence reshapes landscapes, communities, and everyday life.
Featuring works including Forest (2025), Palianytsia (2022), and Russian Rocket (2022), the exhibition moves between destruction and regeneration. Natural materials, familiar cultural symbols, and images of altered landscapes become powerful markers of memory and survival, revealing how art can respond to catastrophe without losing sight of continuity and hope.
Particularly moving is IDP (2026), a documentary following the evacuation of Kadyrova’s monumental Origami Deer from Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine as the front line approached. Removed from the place for which it was created, the sculpture traveled across Europe and ultimately became a central part of the Ukrainian Pavilion’s Security Guarantees exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
Its journey gives Origami Deer a meaning far beyond its physical form. Uprooted yet preserved, it becomes a poignant symbol of displacement, endurance, and the determination to carry culture forward despite war.
Together, the works in The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet offer a deeply affecting portrait of contemporary Ukraine—one shaped by profound loss, but also by resilience, memory, and the persistent possibility of renewal.
On view through November 8, 2026, The Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street, New York, NY.