An "Origami Deer" statue rescued from a Ukrainian city destroyed and occupied by Moscow's army is touring six European countries before featuring at the 61st Venice Biennale, which has sparked outrage over the inclusion of Russian artists.
Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova created the concrete work with her colleague Denys Ruban in 2019 for a park in the eastern city of Pokrovsk to replace a Soviet-era military plane displayed there.
In 2024, Kadyrova and historian Leonid Marushchak removed the deer, shaped like a paper origami, as Russian troops closed in and then occupied Pokrovsk.
The sculpture will be the main feature of the Ukrainian pavilion, named Security Guarantees, at the Venice Biennale.
It will feature alongside Russian exhibits at the event that started in 1895 and comprises festivals, art and architecture exhibitions running from May 9 to November 22.
The decision to invite Russian artists, banned from the 2022 and 2024 editions after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has sparked international uproar with the European Union threatening to cut funding for the Biennale.
"It's very important for us to see how the entire world reacts to the situation, supporting us and opposing Russia's participation," Marushchak told AFP.
"If the Russians want to show their culture, they might as well organize a biennale in Pokrovsk which they have destroyed," he added.
En route to Venice, the deer has been exhibited in Warsaw, Vienna and Prague and will continue on to Berlin, Brussels and Paris.
Displaced from its pedestal, the deer symbolizes "millions of Ukrainians who have lost their home" and moved abroad, Kadyrova told AFP during a stopover in Prague.
The resemblance to paper origami refers to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 which saw Ukraine yielding its nuclear arsenal to Russia in exchange for security guarantees that did not materialize.
"So it's no more than paper," Kadyrova said.
Marushchak has been evacuating works of art from eastern Ukraine since the war started.
He has saved scores of objects, often taking huge risk with his team, to protect them from looting or theft.
One of the most dramatic rescue operations involved a 700-year-old stone lion statue evacuated from a museum in Bakhmut in 2023, just before the Russian army took the city, as Marushchak's car was hit by a shell on the way out.
"Other evacuations were difficult in that we didn't succeed as much as we wanted because the front line was too close and the danger was too big," Marushchak told AFP.
The Venice Biennale typically attracts more than 600,000 visitors to pavilions set up by participating countries.
Kadyrova said the Ukrainian team was not planning any protest over Russia's participation as "it's up to politicians".
"But I hope that some community will gather to pressure the Biennale, pressure Italy, and I hope that it will not happen."
