The fall art season in the capital is a form of escapism—a legitimate opportunity to put everyday life on hold and escape the first chill of winter and the noise of the media. Starting in mid-September, Kyiv’s art spaces traditionally offer a fresh perspective on the city, people, and their psychology. Today, visiting an exhibition is a way to structure your own thoughts through art, and it’s always an engaging cultural experience.
UA.News has put together a guide to the 7 must-see exhibitions of fall 2026. That’s a total of 7 different ways to experience this fall aesthetically. Read more in our article.
FLASHBACK. Sasha Makarska and Anastasia Podervyanska
Address: Imagine Point Gallery, 86/1 Holosiivskyi Avenue
Dates: August 28–September 26, 2026
A flashback is a recurring memory that arises suddenly and involuntarily. It intrudes into consciousness without any deliberate attempt to recall it. In such moments, a person relives past experiences or individual fragments of them. This happens intensely—one might say almost physically—as if everything were happening right now.
These memories can vary in emotional tone: they may be uplifting and joyful or, conversely, tragic. But in any case, they remain powerful and profound. It is precisely this phenomenon that served as the inspiration for the joint exhibition by Sasha Makarska and Anastasia Podervyanska.
The artists use the idea of a flashback as a way to talk about their long-standing friendship and how they have observed each other’s creative work over the years. The exhibition transforms personal, sudden memories into a shared artistic space where the two artistic practices meet and mirror one another.
World Press Photo 2026
Address: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center, 1 Vasylkivska St.
Dates: September 3–27, 2026
The Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center is hosting an exhibition of the winners of the annual World Press Photo contest. The exhibition brings together the best works in photojournalism and documentary photography. For the third time, the Odesa Photo Days festival is bringing the contest results to Ukraine. This year, a record number of photos were submitted: over fifty-seven thousand works from nearly four thousand photographers from one hundred and forty countries. Among the winners is Ukrainian photographer Yevgen Maloletka. His work “Russian Attack on Kyiv” won the Single Image category in the European region. This is Yevgen’s second World Press Photo award.
Olena Honcharuk, Creative Director of the Dovzhenko Center, notes that the competition consistently offers a broad cross-section of the complexities of modern life and broadens the horizons of Ukrainian audiences. At the same time, documentary photography has long ceased to be merely an impartial witness—it can serve both as a voice of truth and as a tool of manipulation. For an institution that works with audiovisual memory, this exhibition provides an opportunity to discuss the sensitivity and responsibility of the gaze. We therefore highly recommend attending the event.
LandEscape. Anastasia Podervyanska
Address: Dymchuk Gallery, 21 Yaroslavska St.
Dates: September 2–October 3, 2026
A solo exhibition by Anastasia Podervyanska, featuring paintings and gesso works created by the artist between 2012 and 2026. For the artist, landscape is one of her most enduring themes. She returns to it again and again, observing the space and each time seeking a new interpretation of a familiar image. This constant search becomes both an escape from reality and a return to it.
In her works, the landscape unfolds through composition, line, form, and color. The road, field, water, sky, or horizon remain recognizable, but their relationships, scale, and rhythm vary from canvas to canvas. This exhibition can be viewed as a unique diary of observations: its pages chronicle the evolution of the landscape, the artist’s perspective, and her artistic language itself.
Karina Synytsia. “A Discovery!”
Address: Small Gallery of the Art Arsenal, 28 Ivan Mazepa St.
Dates: September 17–October 17, 2026
Karina Synytsia’s exhibition begins with a simple and almost fairy-tale-like image: children playing hide-and-seek, discovering a cave, and inside it—fossilized shells. “How old are they? Are they older than my mom? Are they alive? And are we alive?” This project grew out of reflections on the feelings evoked by a paleontological discovery.
At its heart is a moment of accidental contact with something ancient, hidden in the earth. The artist transports the viewer into a world of mystery, where such an encounter could happen anywhere: amid a wild landscape, above or below ground, in Troieshchyna or Kudryavka. Many important discoveries in paleontology were made not by experts, but by children. In Karina Synytsia’s works, a child’s perspective transforms any place into a space for play, exploration, and discovery. The figures of children also allude to the story of Mary Anning, a self-taught paleontologist who began collecting fossils as a child.
The discovery of an ammonite shell becomes an encounter with both death and life. This creature, which lived long before humans appeared, witnessed the dinosaurs and went extinct alongside them, bearing within itself traces of entire eras.
“The Beauty
of Japan”
Address: Kyiv City History Museum Exhibition Center, 7 Bohdan Khmelnytskyi St.
Dates: August 7–October 25, 2026
This is a journey through Japanese culture, where art, history, traditions, and philosophy are brought together in a single space. The exhibition is structured as a symbolic journey comprising seven thematic sections. Each section reveals a distinct stage of a person’s inner journey and, together, they tell the story of Japan through the changing seasons, cultural traditions, spiritual practices, and values that have shaped the country over the centuries.
Visitors will see exquisite paintings from the Nanga school in the museum’s collection, traditional Kabuki theater puppets, samurai armor, tea ceremony items, musical instruments, and original examples of bladed weapons from the early 18th century. Of particular interest is the immersive space dedicated to sumi-nagashi—an ancient Japanese technique of painting on water.
The exhibition’s title is inspired by an essay by Nobel Prize laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Like his text, the project invites visitors to discover Japan not only through history or art, but through a sense of the beauty of nature, harmony, traditions, and the value of every moment.
Anatoliy Kryvolap. “Infinity”
Address: Museum of the Avant-Garde, 16 Lipska St.
Dates: September 9–November 11, 2026
Anatoliy Kryvolap is an artist whose work occupies a special place in the history of contemporary Ukrainian art. His painting has developed a recognizable and distinctive language centered on color, space, light, and the inner energy of form. Ukrainian landscapes hold a special place in this artistic language. In the artist’s works, they transcend the boundaries of a specific landscape and transform into images filled with inner tension, silence, and light.
The title “Infinity” refers to one of the key sensations in Kryvolap’s work—the boundlessness of color, light, and space. His landscapes do not merely depict nature but convey a state of mind and mood that seems to extend beyond the canvas. The project continues the Avant-Garde Museum’s ongoing effort to conceptualize Ukrainian art as a continuous process. Here, Kryvolap’s work emerges as one of the manifestations of the living legacy of the Ukrainian avant-garde—a tradition that did not end in the 1920s and 1930s, but continues and takes on new meaning and vision today.
FIGHT < CARE < PLAY < UNITE
Address: Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts, 15–17 Tereshchenkivska St.
Dates: September 4–November 29, 2026
The Khanenko Museum presents a textile exhibition by Dutch artist Marjo van Schaik, who divides her time between Amsterdam and Kyiv. She works with raw wool from Dutch sheep, combining it with hemp and natural dyes. Her works are narrative—they seek to express emotions, and many of them address the war in Ukraine.
The exhibition
space consists of four interconnected rooms with no set route: “Fight,” “Care,” “Play,” and “Connect.” These are four ways to act and support oneself and others in times of war. The “Fight” room depicts the consequences of attacks through enlarged images of anxiety and destruction, but ends on a note of hope. “Care” draws on Hryhorii Skovoroda’s ideas about relationships with others and self-discovery, offering spaces for rest. “Play” speaks to freedom, lightness, and the ability to laugh even in difficult times. “Unite” explores the power of community coming together after forced displacement. Visitors can not only view the works—as is customary at exhibitions—but also touch them to feel their texture.
