Inhale / Exhale — the first Ukrainian participation that speaks in its own voice.
In 2025, Ukraine is officially represented at the Triennale di Milano for the first time in its history — a global platform founded in 1923 that brings together architecture, design, and contemporary art.
And for the first time, this voice is entirely Ukrainian: from concept to realization.
The Ukrainian Pavilion is created by ZAG — a contemporary art gallery from Lviv founded during the full-scale war.
“We are not merely participants. We are messengers of new meanings,” — ZAG team
What does this participation mean?
ZAG has been invited into a conversation of a global scale.
Our voice is heard in political, cultural, and artistic contexts — as an equal.
This is not about presence.
This is about position.
The position of those who experience war not only as loss, but as a point of renewal.
The position of those who speak not of pity, but of respect.
The exhibition theme is inequality.
But our dialogue goes deeper —
about bodies without limbs that still hold hope,
about breath turning into resistance,
about dreams that cannot be drowned.
“Lviv is a city where life is relatively safer: fewer missiles, fewer alarms. Yet here the contrast of inequality is felt more sharply — physically, mentally, spiritually. Art here faces the challenge of changing the lens: not pity, but respect.”
— Khrystyna Berehovska, Director of ZAG and Curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion
ZAG Pavilion: A Space of Five Voices
Five artists. Five works. Five paths toward understanding resilience.
Featured artists:
• Volodymyr Semkiv
• Oleksa Furdiyak
• Denys Shymanskyi
• Veronika Cherednichenko
• Olha Kuziura
Their works are united by the idea of collective mapping — physical endurance, mental tension, and national identity that does not dissolve even in moments of fragmentation.
A Wall That Breathes
Olha Kuziura’s installation is composed of dozens of sculpted human hands emerging from a wall.
These hands represent loss. Testimony. Action.
Even when hands are gone — will remains.
It speaks of those who continue to fight, even after losing the physical ability to hold a weapon.
A Smile That Passed Through Fire
Volodymyr Semkiv’s Optimist — a charred wooden head that smiles. Nearby, the wall of hands.
This image embodies paradox: when everything burns, laughter survives.
A smile through ash. Hope that could not be set ablaze.
Breath as Resistance
Oleksa Furdiyak’s installation Breathing pulses with the rhythm of life.
Black cylinders resemble lungs; their motion — inhale / exhale — becomes a metaphor for Ukraine itself.
When every breath is an act of survival.
Even if it might be the last.
A Space That Sinks and Re-emerges
Veronika Cherednichenko’s VR installation responds to the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.
It is a visual landscape of disappearance — memory submerged, identity searching for new form, consciousness unafraid to transform.
Cracks That Became Shelter
Denys Shymanskyi’s Pillar of Life / Cracks — Shelter explores spaces of survival: basements, bomb shelters, fractures in walls — and in hearts.
Here, the crack is not ruin.
It is refuge.
ZAG at the Triennale is not about representation.
“Our art is about ‘stairs into the abyss,’ ‘a gas mask without gas,’ ‘weapons without bullets’ — and at the same time about the dream of a closed sky and joy without irony.”
— Khrystyna Berehovska
ZAG is a breath the world can hear.
Curator: Khrystyna Berehovska
Co-curators: Karina Davydova, Vira Tuchapska
