Exhibition: "Chornobyl. The Shelter Object"

The National Center "Ukrainian House" presents "Chornobyl. The Shelter Object" — an exhibition project that reinterprets and humanizes the myth of Chornobyl as a layering of landscapes: cultural and natural, lost and rediscovered, scientific and magical, catastrophe and sanctuary.

The heroic feat of liquidators, the hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes, and radioactive contamination remain a living part of our collective memory. Yet, over the last forty years, Chornobyl has lived a life of its own: self-settlers returned, scientists made new discoveries, abandoned homes and cemeteries came alive during visits from the evacuated, and forests filled with wildlife.

While the Exclusion Zone is often imagined as a ghostly place where life vanished, this exhibition portrays the Chornobyl landscape not as a silent witness to tragedy, but as a mystical force that draws people in despite the danger. Through documentary evidence, the exhibition leads viewers on a path from the 1986 disaster to the 2025 Russian drone strike on the New Safe Confinement. It showcases the preserved heritage of Chornobyl’s Polissya, explores the Jewish history of the region, and presents Ivan Lytovchenko’s preparatory materials for Pripyat’s mosaics and Yulii Sinkevych’s sketches for the "Prometheus" monument.

The artistic reflection features Maria Prymachenko’s Chornobyl series, works by Viktor Zaretskyi, Ada Rybachuk, Volodymyr Melnichenko, Liudmyla Mieshkova, documentary photography by Viktor Marushchenko, and works by artist-liquidators Oleh Veklenko and Dmytro Nahurnyi.