When Russia returns to the Venice Biennale art exhibition on May 9, the Ukrainian team exhibiting nearby say they will not be staging any protest.
Artist Zhanna Kadyrova, who will represent Ukraine at the Venice exhibition, told RFE/RL, "We will focus on our message and spend all our stress to make our pavilion as good as possible…. This is our fight."
The upcoming biennale will mark the first time since Moscow's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia has exhibited. The country has its own, Tsarist-era pavilion inside the park where the prestigious art event is staged.
Russia's inclusion has sparked a war of words between Rome and Brussels, with the European Commission threatening to withhold a 2 million euro ($2.3 million) grant earmarked for the biannual event if Russia's exhibit goes ahead.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has slammed the EU over the defunding ultimatum. "With what is happening in the world and in Iran, for Brussels to threaten Italian cultural institutions is truly embarrassing," he said at an event in early April.
Russia's cultural exchange chief told ARTnews in March that the country's pavilion at Venice will host "more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries."
The exhibition, he said, "is further proof that Russian culture is not isolated, and that attempts to ‘cancel' it -- undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites -- have not succeeded."
A recent joint letter signed by Kyiv and 21 EU countries protested against the Russian pavilion being reopened amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. "Granting Russia a prestigious international cultural platform sends a deeply troubling signal," the letter said.
Kadyrova, who spoke to RFE/RL the same day a Russian drone destroyed her colleague's apartment in Kyiv, describes the artwork she will show at Venice as a reflection on the worthlessness of some international agreements. But, she said, her Origami Deer was never intended to be a political statement.
In 2019, Kadyrova won a commission to emplace an artwork where a Soviet jet once stood in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. "I just tried to make something, understandable, traditional a bit," she said.
But the concrete deer sculpture took on new significance after the 2022 invasion.
As Russian forces neared the city, Kadyrova returned to Pokrovsk in 2024 to cut the sculpture off its plinth and drive it west to safety. "Even our art is a refugee, it's not just the people that are displaced," she said. Pokrovsk was largely destroyed by fighting and is currently occupied by Russia.
Russia's return to Venice will be the latest example of the country being represented at major events. International judo, aquatics and paralympic organizations have all recently cleared Russian and Belarusians to compete under their own flags.
Roman Hryshchuk is the captain of Ukraine's water polo team, which forfeited a match at the world cup in Malta on April 13 when they were scheduled to face a Russian team competing as neutrals. On the same day the World Aquatics organization, which oversees water polo, announced that a ban on Russians competing under their own flag had been lifted.
Despite the future penalties the team may face as a consequence of the withdrawal, the Ukrainian told RFE/RL that "if we meet the Russians in another tournament, I think it would be a similar position. Because we can't play with an aggressor state."
