The Lavra will host the art project "Letters from the Front"

The art project “Letters from the Front,” which combines contemporary art with firsthand accounts of the war, will open on April 17 at 3:00 p.m. at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve. The exhibition will be located on the first floor of the Great Lavra Bell Tower at 21 Ivan Mazepa Street. 

Interfax-Ukraine reports on the event. The art project is a collaborative effort by artists Vladislav Gabda and Oksana Brenzovych, offering viewers an artistic interpretation of the war and contact with its material evidence. 

The central element of the exhibition consists of real artifacts—damaged bulletproof vests and personal protective equipment, presented as standalone objects. Gabda’s series “War Without Embellishment” emphasizes factuality and traumatic experience, while Brenzovych’s work “A Letter That Cannot Be Rewritten” explores the theme of memory as an irreversible process. The exhibition is complemented by examples of modern military technology from the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 5th Separate Kyiv Assault Brigade and the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Control Company. 

Art historian Mykhailo Syrokhman noted that in this project, reality takes on the characteristics of painting, and the boundary between life and death becomes a defining element of the visual language. The project was implemented with the support of the Trakai Historical Museum and in collaboration with the Cultural Forces platform, curated by Alviga Zmejevskene. The organizers expect the exhibition to serve as a space for reflecting on events through personal stories and material evidence that shape Ukraine’s new cultural memory.

Meanwhile, on April 15, the National Center for Folk Culture “Ivan Honchar Museum” will open a large-scale project titled “CHERNOBYL: Saved Treasures of Polissya | Lina Kostenko on Chernobyl Expeditions.” The event is dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl tragedy.