Ukraine's Evacuated Deer Sculpture Arrives at Venice Biennale
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- Zhanna Kadyrova created the concrete origami-style deer in 2018 for a park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, to replace a decommissioned Su-7 fighter-bomber on its plinth as part of post-conflict regeneration efforts; it became a beloved local landmark over time.
- Leonid Marushchak organized the sculpture's evacuation from Pokrovsk in June–August 2024 as the frontline closed in, using angle grinders, a hammer drill, and a crane to remove it from its plinth on 30 August 2024 — securing permission partly by offering to also evacuate a statue of composer Mykola Leontovych.
- The deer has since traveled overland through Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Brussels, and Paris, pausing in grand imperial settings it was never designed for, and will be installed suspended from a crane near the entrance of the Giardini — creating deliberate ambiguity about whether it is being removed or placed.
- Ukraine's Venice Biennale pavilion, titled "Security Guarantees" and curated by Marushchak and Ksenia Malykh, centers the sculpture as a symbol of rupture and displacement, with a companion film documenting the evacuation and locals' reactions to leaving.
- The Venice Biennale has controversially invited Russia back to its national pavilion after an absence since 2022, a decision that has caused friction with the Italian cultural ministry and prompted Ukrainian curators to fear their exhibition will be framed as merely the "anti-Russian pavilion."
- Pokrovsk is now under Russian military control with the park likely destroyed, making the deer — which displaced residents travel to touch and make wishes upon — the sole surviving feature of a city visitable only in memory.
Why it matters: A beloved artwork becomes both a literal artifact rescued from destruction and a deliberate political statement: curators explicitly compare the deer's suspended, homeless state to Ukraine's precarious security situation. The Biennale's parallel decision to readmit Russia, which has destroyed cultural heritage in Ukraine, Syria, and Chechnya, forces the Ukrainian team into a diplomatic tightrope — they fear their pavilion will be read not as an independent artistic statement but as a counterweight to Moscow's presence.
