Dedicated to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Wartime Posters 2022–2025: The Way of Resistance features the work of 42 participating contemporary artists from Ukraine, Poland and France who created posters to support Ukraine in 2022-2025.

These graphic works both reflect and record events, the courage and resistance of Ukrainians during the war, false Russian propaganda, and war crimes.The exhibition includes a selection of 309 posters as well as video documentation of 37 Wartime Posters exhibitions held in public spaces of the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, over the past four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. 

Wartime Posters is a long-term patriotic open-air art project founded in 2022 at the initiative of curators Olena Speranska and Gennadiy Kozub, in cooperation with the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Zaporizhzhia City Council.

In 2022–2023, nineteen outdoor Wartime Posters exhibitions by contemporary Ukrainian artists, graphic designers, and illustrators — including Les Arts contre la Guerre (a collective project that emerged in Paris, France) — were presented in Zaporizhzhia. As a result, a collection of 453 graphic works was compiled and published in the eponymous book in 2023.

“With a single piece of art we can research our past, we can understand our present, and we can relate to the evolution of human society in the future,” Speranska said.

Olena Speranska said in early March 2022 she received a request to create an art project to show support for Ukrainians, which resulted in the first exhibition of Ukrainian anti-war posters at the Ogaki poster museum in Japan.

When she began searching online she found many war-related images posted by Ukrainian artists, using the only tools they had available to them — mobile phones, tablets, and personal laptops. Speranska began to collect the images and knew she had to use this art to share information with the world about the war’s impact on Ukraine.

“We can clearly declare that Russia is a terrorist state, and that’s why we must work with counterpropaganda to spread the truth about what is really going on,” Speranska said.

Participating artists: 
Oleh Buganov, Dmytro Dziuba, Oleksandr Grekhov, Oleg Gryshchenko, Artem Gusev, Yurko Gutsulyak, Anastasia Haidaenko, Mykola Honcharov, Zakentiy Horobyov, Vincent Hulme (France), Bartlomiej Kielbowicz (Poland), Myriam El Khawaga (France), Maria Kinovych, Stas Kolotov, Sashko Kom’yahov, Mykola Kovalenko, Nikita Kravtsov (Ukraine-France), Elina Kulich (France), Marta Leshak, Katya Lisova, Anton Logov, Daria Lutsyshyna, Maksym Malovichko, Nato Mikeladze, Vladyslav Mykhailiv, Marsel Onisko, Maksym Palenko, Yulya Pilyulya, Dasha Podoltseva, Oleksii Revika, Oleksiy Sai, Anna Sarvira, Liliana Saus (France), Iegor Sekirin (France), Mykyta Shylimov, Dmytro Simonov, Mykhailo Skop, Nikita Titov, Khrystyna Valko, Ivan Volyanskyi, Albina Yaloza, Andriy Yermolenko. 

Photo courtesy Marc William