Still Joy, From Ukraine into the World

Simone Post’s work opens a different, magical realm of reality that makes room for naive, childlike joy. The artist brings the historic interior of a palazzo to life by creating candy replicas of chandeliers and objects from throughout the house. She places images of her family, made from lollipops, in decorative frames. The installation, combining elements of domestic comfort, historic interiors, and countless colorful sweets, becomes a kind of mirage. Is this a memory of something that never was? A dream of the impossible? Or perhaps a hallucination?

Using candy, Post gives the antiques a carefree quality inherent in the naïve joy of childhood. However, this material, which melts so easily, highlights the fragile, fleeting nature of this state. Can we be so carefree in the world around us?

The PinchukArtCentre and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation present Still Joy – From Ukraine into the World is an official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition-La Biennale di Venezia.

Still Joy-From Ukraine into the World brings together leading international and Ukrainian artists reflecting on the concept of joy as both a vital force and a radical act of humanity. The exhibition’s starting point and disruptive agent are the testimonies collected by the Ukrainian story-gatherer Hlib Stryzhko, a marine, veteran, and former prisoner of war. These stories are anchoring fragments of reality within the exhibition.

Participating artists include: Kateryna Aliinyk, Piotr Armianovski, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Julian Charrière, Tacita Dean, Ryan Gander, Gabrielle Goliath, Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova, Alevtina Kakhidze, Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Pavlo Kovach. Bogdana Kosmina, Katya Lesiv, Kateryna Lysovenko, Simone Post, Ashfika Rahman, Daniel Turner, Álvaro Urbano, Lesia Vasyichenko, Oleksiy Sai & Yury Gruzinov.

The exhibition begins with a video installation of rave scenes in Kyiv, captured before and during the full-scale war, by prominent Ukrainian artist duo Malashchuk & Khimei. Nearby are Aliinyk’s landscape paintings, where small animal life vibrates under a soft moonlit glow, and a video essay by Armianovski, blending the reality of war and discovering dreams seen by the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The first section culminates in a new site-specific, immersive installation by Simone Post, reimagining the palazzo’s interior through an ephemeral architectural structure made of candy, inviting visitors into a moment of childlike joy.

The exhibition continues with individual stories, memories of lost communities, and contemplations of love. Future Generation Art Prize winners Ashfika Rahman (Main Prize, 2024) and Zhanna Kadyrova (Special Prize, 2014)
address forced displacement through endurance, care, and responsibility in their unique works; Rahman’s radiant installation of Hindu temple bells suspended by golden silk threads appears in conversation with plants salvaged from bombed Ukrainian buildings: Kadyrova’s site-specific installation composed of light boxes and living plants -figures of “refugees” in transit, receiving healing and care.

Personal joys- at once empowering and sorrowful -emerge in Gabrielle Goliath’s recent video works depicting Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ soldiers and civilians, sharing intimate testimonies. Joy as memory and love runs through Tacita Dean’s 39-minute 16mm film, If I were in the Adlon (2025), featuring the Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov and Vita Mikhailov, his wife, collaborator and muse, during one afternoon in the eponymous Berlin hotel, known for its ties to Cold War intrigue and espionage. Nearby, Cardiff & Miller’s installation Conversations with My Mother (2023), where telephones become a thread that binds us to those who are no longer here.

Moving through landscape and body, further works by Dean, Kakhidze, Urbano, Sai, Gander, Charrière, and Kadan trace how human actions leave marks and scars. From Dean’s hand-touched photographs of century-old Sakura trees to Urbano’s painted-metal Kalyna (viburnum) branch-a plant no longer meant to be smelled or plucked-the works call into relief the simple but precarious joy of survival. Kakhidze’s accompanying in-exhibition tattoo salon allows viewers to themselves be literally marked by the exhibition, in perpetuity. The exhibition concludes with a monumental drawing depicting a historical scene of a silent rave, captured by leading Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan, where bodies become a landscape of emergence and loss.

Across all its layers, Still Joy responds to the present moment- originating in Ukraine and extending beyond -to a place that is fragile, yet resilient, where joy endures!

LocationVenice Art BiennaleDesignSimone PostYear2026Exhibited5 May until 1 August 2026Thanks toPinchuk Art Foundation