Ukraine Announces Zhanna Kadyrova, Kseniia Malykh, and Leonid Marushchak for Venice Biennale 2026

Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications has selected the artistic team that will represent the national pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2026. Artist Zhanna Kadyrova will present Security Guarantees, curated by Kseniia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak. It marks another pivotal moment for Ukraine's cultural diplomacy on one of the art world's most influential stages.

Zhanna Kadyrova has emerged as one of Ukraine's most compelling contemporary voices. She works across sculpture, installation, and site-specific interventions that interrogate space, conflict, and survival. Her practice transforms everyday materials into profound meditations on value, displacement, and cultural identity.

Her internationally acclaimed series, Market, reimagined construction materials as hyperrealistic food sculptures, questioning systems of consumption and artistic value. More recently, while sheltering in western Ukraine during 2022, Kadyrova created Palianytsia, hand-carved river stones shaped like traditional Ukrainian bread. The title references a word that became a wartime shibboleth, one that was difficult for Russian speakers to pronounce correctly, therebythere by transforming language itself into an act of resistance.

Kadyrova's name has become emblematic of Ukraine's voice in the global art world. Her works are conceptually rigorous and materially bold addressingaddress themes of architecture, war, public space, and collective memory. As an artist who emerged from the R.E.P. group during the Orange Revolution, her work continues to mirror the urgencies of her context.

In 2025, her digital work, Anxiety, was sold at the first auction held by the Ukrainian Fund of Digitized Art (UFDA). The bidding began at 6,500 USDC and closed at 7,700 USDC, demonstrating rising international interest in digitized Ukrainian art — and marking a symbolic moment of convergence between contemporary art and new technological formats.

The curatorial partnership of Kseniia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak brings both institutional depth and grassroots activism to the project. Malykh, formerly of the PinchukArtCentre, has dedicated her practice to cultural infrastructure, archival work, and art education as tools for societal resilience. Currently developing a cultural hub in Ivano-Frankivsk, she champions institutions as living systems deeply rooted in their communities.

In her recent UFDA podcast appearance, Malykh explored how memory, digitization, and civic engagement are reshaping Ukrainian cultural life during unprecedented circumstances.

Leonid Marushchak operates at the intersection of cultural programming, civic activism, and historical reframing. Together, this curatorial team promises a pavilion that speaks not merely about Ukraine but from within its ongoing process of redefining sovereignty, solidarity, and cultural meaning.

The 61st Venice Biennale is set to open in May 2026 under unique circumstances. Following the death of Koyo Kouoh, the initially appointed artistic director, in 2025, her conceptually led exhibition, "In Minor Tonalities," will proceed under the guidance of a curatorial council she selected.

For Ukraine, Venice represents far more than an artistic exhibition; it serves as a crucial platform for cultural diplomacy where aesthetics, politics, and international dialogue converge. Since establishing its national pavilion in 2001, Ukraine has utilized this space to showcase artistic innovation and geopolitical realities to global audiences.

With Security Guarantees, Ukraine's 2026 presentation promises to continue this tradition of using art as both a mirror and catalyst for broader conversations about survival, identity, and future-making.

Don't miss our podcast interview with Kseniia Malykh, where she discusses archiving, community building, and the future of Ukrainian institutions.