The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet | Zhanna Kadyrova
20 June – September 6 2026
The Ukrainian Museum presents the first North American museum exhibition of internationally acclaimed Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova, featuring five projects created since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Through personal experience, the artist explores displacement, resistance, and regeneration as forces that have reshaped the country’s landscapes, cities, and people.
In March 2022, Kadyrova and her partner and collaborator Denys Ruban were forced to leave Kyiv for a safer region, finding refuge in a village in Transcarpathia. Her early wartime projects were shaped by these conditions. A defining feature of Kadyrova’s practice is her use of a wide range of materials and media; in The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet, she works with materials that were immediately available, including river stones in Palianytsia, traditional village embroidered textiles in Anxiety (both 2022–), and mobile phone footage in Russian Rocket (2022–). For the video installation Forest (2023-2025) and the film IDP (2026), she also collaborated with professional videographers.
Although Kadyrova has returned to live and work in Kyiv, the five works in the exhibition reflect the ongoing condition in which Ukrainians have lived for more than four years—where survival requires constant adaptation and near-daily adjustment to new realities.
The exhibition is conceived by The Ukrainian Museum and Zhanna Kadyrova, and curated by the artist in collaboration with the Museum’s curatorial team, with contributions from Asha Bukojemsky.
Major support for The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet has been provided by Illiana van Meeteren and Terrence Boylan, with additional support from Stefan and Larissa Sygida Peleschuk and the Leshko family.
Works on View
Palianytsia
2022 –
Found river stones
Palianytsia centers on the Ukrainian word for traditional wheat bread, now a symbol of resistance and national identity since Russia’s invasion. The project includes drawings and stone sculptures carved to resemble palianytsia loaves, made from stones collected in the Carpathian rivers. Arranged on a banquet-style table, the sculptures transform everyday food into a political statement.
Russian Rocket
2023 –
Multimedia series
Employing quotidian materials such as stickers and iPhone cameras, Kadyrova’s Russian Rocket relies on a simple visual gesture to simulate the flight of a Russian missile across peaceful landscapes. This multimedia work reflects the intrusion of war into everyday life and brings the reality of Ukraine’s conflict into familiar settings around the world.
The Forest
2023 – 2025
Multimedia installation
The Forest draws upon video, sound, photography, and archival materials to explore the aftermath of Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023. Over a two-year period, Kadyrova filmed the unexpected growth of a forest on this site of ecological disaster, creating a work reflective of both environmental loss and nature’s capacity for renewal. Kadyrova seeks to travel back to the Khakova landscape to continue The Forest in the near future.
Anxiety
2022 –
Hand embroidery with hand and
machine–embroidered text
Anxiety juxtaposes domestic comfort with the constant threat of air raids that has shaped daily life in Ukraine since 2022. Using traditional embroidered textiles and contemporary drawings, Kadyrova transposes the words повітряна тривога (air alarm) into idyllic scenes, revealing how war permeates familiar spaces.
IDP
2026
Multimedia installation
IDP (Internally Displaced Person) is a documentary film centered on the forced evacuation of Kadyrova’s Origami Deer, a monument to disarmament originally installed on the plinth of a former nuclear-capable aircraft. Following the sculpture’s journey across Europe, IDP frames Origami Deer as an internally displaced person, tracing migratory paths that parallel those of individuals uprooted by war—collapsing the distance between artwork and lived experience.
Public Programs: Coming Soon
