The exhibition “Warsaw – Mariupol – cities of ruins, cities of struggle, cities of hope” was opened in the KROKODIL Center
During the evening, Tetjana Pyankova and Marina Mihajlyuk, residents of KROKODIL’s residency program for literary creators from Ukraine, presented themselves. On this occasion, the documentary film “Erase the Nation” was shown, which shows the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage by the Russian army after the beginning of the aggression.
The exhibition presents photographs of cities destroyed by two totalitarianisms: Warsaw – razed to the ground in 1944 and Mariupol – destroyed in 2022 due to Russian aggression.
This international exhibition shows the cruelty of war, which – regardless of the distance in time – is connected by the tragedy of civilians and soldiers, looting, and the destruction of infrastructure. Its goal, among other things, is to show the universal need for freedom that the Warsaw insurgents fought for and that Ukrainians are now fighting for.
The exhibition “Warsaw – Mariupol – cities of ruins, cities of struggle, cities of hope” was created at the initiative of the Vice President of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland Malgorzata Gosiewska and the President of the Supreme Council of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk. The co-organizers of the project are Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaščak and the head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Repression, Jan Juzef Kaspšik.
The installation consists of sixteen consecutive views of war-torn Warsaw and Mariupol, or places near Kyiv, destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
