About

Security Guarantees is an exhibition by Zhanna Kadyrova, curated by Ksenia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak, and commissioned by Tetyana Berezhna, Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy of Ukraine — Minister of Culture of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Pavilion’s project raises the issue of unfulfilled security guarantees, for which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1996. In 1994, three years after gaining independence, Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. These states, along with Ukraine, became signatories to the Budapest Memorandum, which recognised Ukraine's territorial integrity and committed the other three parties not only to refrain from threatening Ukraine, but to seek its protection should a threat arise. The core of the exhibition is Zhanna Kadyrova's sculpture, The Origami Deer. In 2019, this sculpture was installed in Yuvileynyi (Jubilee) Park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast. On the same site, a dismantled Soviet nuclear-capable jet once stood. The sculpture was cast on a pedestal and was not designed for further transportation. However, in 2024, as the front line approached the city, Zhanna travelled to Pokrovsk with the NGO Museum Open for Renovation, and, together with a group of specialists and municipal workers from Pokrovsk, evacuated the sculpture.