The exhibition has been commissioned by the Ukrainian Institute and produced by the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform with the support of the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine. Curators: Kateryna Semenyuk, Oksana Dovgopolova, and Alim Aliev.

What does Crimea evoke? Unique nature: sea, mountains, and steppe? Ancient cultural heritage? Home to indigenous peoples? Architecture of different eras? Or, perhaps simply music festivals and spaces of freedom. Adam Mickiewicz, in his Crimean Sonnets, sorrowfully regarded the remains of Crimean Tatar fortresses—even then transforming into a thing of the past before his eyes—and was reminded of his own homeland. What does Crimea make us think of today?

In the What We Talk About When We Talk About Crimea project, contemporary Ukrainian artists, including those of Crimean Tatar origin, talk about personal and cultural losses after 2014, the year which marked the start of the ongoing temporary occupation of the peninsula by the Russian Federation and thus the start of the war against Ukraine. The exhibition features works by Oleksii Borysov, Yuri Yefanov, Emine Ziyatdin, Vlodko Kaufman, Vitaliy Kokhan, Pavlo Makov, Roman Mykhailov, Sevilâ Nariman-qızı, Rustem Skybin, Oleg Tistol, Khalil Khalilov, Anton Shebetko, and Elmira Shemsedinova, and with exhibition design by Oleksandr Burlaka.

According to project curators Oksana Dovgopolova and Kateryna Semenyuk, “we would like to share the feeling of fragmentation and loss experienced by Ukraine due to the temporary occupation of Crimea, as well as to highlight the uniqueness of the peninsula as a gateway between civilizations, which ultimately provides the key to understanding the cultural phenomenon of Ukraine”.

Historically, Crimea was where the Mediterranean world encountered the great Asian steppe. Empires operated here, Byzantine, Ottoman, and later Russian. The Crimean Tatar people also had their own state, the Crimean Khanate. For centuries, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Cossacks made alliances, traded, and fought with each other, and Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexisted in Crimea.

In 1944, the Soviets conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing with the mass deportation of the peninsula’s indigenous population. Only on the eve of the collapse of the USSR were the Crimean Tatars permitted to return, which many did with the establishment of Ukraine’s independence. However, the Soviet crime of cultural genocide did lasting harm to the Crimean Tatar language, which is now facing extinction. Today, Ukraine officially recognizes the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks as the indigenous peoples of Crimea. Without them, it is impossible to imagine present-day Ukraine: a multi-layered, multicultural political nation that has been developing for centuries and is now fighting for its future.

“The idea of the exhibition arose quite naturally: to tell the world about Crimea through the works of Ukrainian artists, and in particular Crimean Tatar artists, as Crimea literally courses through their veins”, says Alim Aliev, co-curator of the exhibition and deputy general director of the Ukrainian Institute. “This exhibition is about more than a peninsula temporarily lost to Ukraine. It is also about what lies at the core of Crimea: its people, the contemporary Crimean Tatar culture pulsating and breaking through artificial borders, and the hope of return”.

The project What We Talk About When We Talk About Crimea invites us to consider what Ukraine, Europe, and the world will be like tomorrow. What does the world lose when it cannot, or will not, access Crimea? And what will it gain if freedom returns to the Crimean Peninsula?

The exhibition will run until June 28, 2026.

EXHIBITION OPENING

March 20, 7:00 PM

Jazdów 2, 00–467 Warsaw

Free admission

PUBLIC PROGRAM

The public program of the exhibition will offer different perspectives on Crimea and help to delve into topics important for understanding the project:

• Why the cultural deoccupation of the Crimean Peninsula is topical today.
• How the concept of indigenous peoples is taking on new dimensions in present-day Ukraine.
• What makes Polish reflections on Crimean history unique.

The exhibition will be accompanied by events in various formats: curator-guided tours, meetings with artists, academic discussions.

March 21, 3:00 PM
Exhibition walk with curators and artists

EXHIBITION HOURS

Tuesday–Sunday
11:00–19:00

Thursday
11:00–20:00

The exhibitions are closed on Mondays.
Admission is free on Thursdays.