Happy to confirm that our whole team will be present at the opening of the pavilion. Moreover, we have a new member joining us - young Hermann Nikiforov, Lizaveta German's son, is joining the team as chief happiness manager.

The Ukrainian pavilion is located at the crossroads of several exhibition routes of the Venice Biennale. It can be either the beginning or the end of the exhibition. “We want to use this weakness as a privilege, drawing parallels with the urban space. After all, fountains invite people to pause and immerse themselves in meditation. Same for us: the crossroad where our object will be located defines its context. We have an ideal situation when the space complements the art object,” comments FORMA architect Irina Miroshnikova.

"Because of the war, we have to make the second fountain," said architects @Ira Miroshnikova and @Oleksiy Petrov of @ФОРМА, who are working on the original project of “Fountain of Exhaustion. Acqua Alta”

The presentation of the project at the Biennale is the first chance to launch the fountain as it was originally intended 27 years ago. However, the location of the pavilion and its layout poses a number of limitations and challenges for its embodiment.

The bronze funnels of the fountain cannot be mounted to the walls of the Arsenale di Venezia that is protected by the status of an architectural monument. The pavilion itself is located at the intersection of several corridors with no access to water supply. To make it work, ФОРМА has developed an autonomous structure — a vertical platform to which the funnels are mounted, and a pool with a pump passing water through the funnels.

When the technical aspect of fountain was resolved and the construction was ready to go from Kyiv to Venice, the war broke out. Now ФОРМА is forced to build the second fountain, relying on the support of European contractors.
The pavilion will be able to present the fountain as planned.

The first photo in sequence was taken in August 2021 when the pavilion team just learned they won the national competition to represent Ukraine at 59th International Exhibition – @La Biennale di Venezia. Back then @Lizaveta German & @Maria Lanko were working on programming the exhibition year for their gallery @thenaked room, @Borys Filonenko was engaged in publishing new books as chief-editor of @ist publishing and @Pavlo Makov was opening new exhibitions and working on his new projects.  Today the team is still in Ukraine scattered around different parts of the country.

Pavlo Makov is in Kharkiv with his family spending most of his days and nights in Yermilov centre, which is an official bomb shelter of Kharkiv National University. The area around his workshop is being bombed.  

Liza German is giving ten interviews a day as she «refurbishes» her house to harden it against air strikes: she has a baby due in a week.

Maria Lanko is driving towards the west of Ukraine with bits and pieces of the Fountain hoping to eventually transport it to Venice. 

Borys Filonenko is in Lviv working on the final edits to the catalogue of the project and maintaining distant contact with our designer @Tanya Borzunova who is also in Kharkiv. 

Despite all the challenges brought in by the war, the team is doing everything possible to put together  a full-scale presentation at La Biennale Arte and present Ukrainian contemporary art as it deserves to be presented. / Photo credit Yevgen Nikiforov