Ukraine

The darkest hour is just before dawn

The Ukrainian Pavilion has two spaces: inside and outside of a transparent structure. The space inside the construction symbolises Ukraine's industrial, natural resource, and creative richness. The projects outside of the fragile structure tell stories about new design collaborations in times of crisis for Ukraine and the vital role of design in creating new progressive connections.

Due to its liminal location between the conditional West and East, Ukraine has always been an important centre of communication operations, where ideas were exchanged, bold collaborations were implemented, and new ways of cooperation were found.

With the beginning of the full-scale phase of the war in 2022, all Ukrainian residents, and in particular Ukrainian designers, found themselves face -to-face with the need to resolve the tasks of building communications with the whole world. Faced with a shortage of basic resources due to war, the designers of the planet's default breadbasket want to demonstrate that even through the tapered windows of our homes, during times of blackout, they clearly see opportunities for fruitful cooperation with the democratic free world, and they implement the most daring design ideas.

Each of the presented cases demonstrate not so much new communication between Ukrainian design potentials but reflects the sincere desire and ability to interact with gratitude and interest for the sake of life as a single law of planet Earth.

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Credits

Curators:

Larysa Tsybina

Design historian

Konstantin Kovshevatsky

Founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Pragmatika Magazine

Designers:

Denys Sokolov & SVOYA studio

Dnipro

Serhii Hotvianskyi

Dnipro

Olga Kleitman

Kharkiv

Valerii Kuznetsov

Dnipro

Antonina Kaplia

Kyiv

Dmytro Syvak & Sivak+Partners

Odessa/Kyiv

Kateryna Sokolova and Arkadii Vartanov & Noom

Kharkiv

Kirill Tykva & MO Graphic Design

2023 Exhibitors