Four years after the invasion, a poster exhibition presents Ukraine through symbols, colour and everyday life. Contemporary artists reinterpret heritage and resilience, offering audiences a cultural portrait shaped by memory, continuity and quiet defiance.
Yellow like sunflowers bending toward the light. Blue like a sky that refuses to darken.
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These two colours, inseparable from Ukraine’s national flag, have transformed the Ilkhom Theatre in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, into a visual meditation on memory, resilience and cultural identity.
The exhibition Yellow & Blue, organised by the Delegation of the European Union to Uzbekistan and the Embassy of Ukraine, opened exactly four years after the start of Russia’s full scale invasion.
Rather than recounting war through images of destruction, the exhibition offers something quieter and more intimate: a portrait of Ukraine through its cultural symbols and contemporary visual language.
Reworking tradition
At the heart of the exhibition are posters created by Pictoric, a Ukrainian illustration collective founded in 2014. Known for their refined graphic style and conceptual depth, the artists reinterpret elements of Ukrainian heritage through contemporary design.
Traditional embroidery patterns, the intricate geometry of the vyshyvanka, appear throughout the collection. But here they are not simply decorative. In one piece, an embroidered motif flows across the façade of a modern apartment block, suggesting that tradition inhabits even the most urban spaces. In another, a folk ornament reshapes itself into protective armour around a human silhouette, turning craft into metaphor.
Sunflowers, wheat fields and village landscapes also recur. Yet these are not romantic pastoral scenes. A field of yellow becomes a fragmented map. Blue horizons blur into abstract planes. Folk imagery dissolves into modern composition. The visual tension between past and present gives the exhibition its rhythm.
Everyday life under strain
The exhibition deliberately avoids explicit depictions of destruction. Instead, it turns to the quiet persistence of daily life. Posters show kitchens and balconies bathed in shifting light, tram lines crossing city squares, playgrounds and family tables. In a country living under missile attacks, culture is shown a living practice.
Colour drives the emotional rhythm. Yellow and blue appear not merely as the flag. Warm yellow evokes memory, care and home. Deep blue carries distance, uncertainty and reflection. Together, they create a visual dialogue between resilience and vulnerability.
In the context of the full scale invasion of Russian forces, this choice feels deliberate. It suggests that culture endures not only through monuments, but through daily practice.
Beyond the posters
The cultural programme extended beyond posters. Visitors were invited to a screening of Anton Ptushkin’s documentary Us, Our Pets and the War, which follows soldiers and volunteers, Ukrainians and foreigners alike, who risk their lives to rescue animals affected by the conflict.
The film reframes war through acts of care and compassion, suggesting that even in devastation, humanity persists. As Ptushkin’s work implies, sometimes it is not people who save the animals, but animals who save people.
The opening also carried a clear political message. EU Ambassador to Uzbekistan Toivo Klaar reaffirmed the European Union’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Ukraine and Ukrainian culture and identity are here to stay,” he told the audience, standing alongside representatives of EU Member States and European partners who had earlier issued a joint video message commemorating the hundreds of children killed during Russian attacks.
The exhibition runs at the Ilkhom Theatre in Tashkent until the end of the week, inviting visitors to encounter Ukraine through art rather than headlines.
