In a few days after the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a bunch of graphic images flooded the internet to attract the world’s attention.

Graphic artworks appeared mostly on social media, screaming for help, to close the sky, provide arms, and stop the Kremlin’s military aggression.

Artists, representing the most sensitive and fragile layer of society, reacted fast using their main available tool—art and creativity. The tool that helped to spread the word and stimulate the reaction of the world’s leaders to action.

In panic, despair, disorientation, fear, and anger caused by the injustice of the violent occupation Ukraine’s population faced the worst aggressive hostilities in Europe since World War II. This caused internal and international displacement, economic instability, thousands of deaths, injuries, and emotional trauma.

Through their creative work, the artists showed reflections of collective grief, despair, unbearable pain, sorrow, and, at the same time, the willingness to fight and win, the hope for justice and peace. A cry for help, a declaration of our indomitable spirit and bravery, with elements of bitter irony and truth about specific events and war crimes. All these were reflected in Ukrainian artists’ works created in the first days of the full-scale war until now.

Wartime Posters is a long-term patriotic open-air art project founded in Ukraine in 2022 at the initiative of curators Olena Speranska and Gennadiy Kozub, who operate the longest-running art residency in Ukraine—BIRUCHIY—in cooperation with the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Zaporizhzhia City Council.

In 2022–2023, nineteen outdoor Wartime Posters exhibitions by contemporary Ukrainian artists, graphic designers, and illustrators—including Les Arts contre la Guerre (a collective project that emerged in Paris, France)—were presented in Zaporizhzhia. As a result, a collection of 453 graphic works was compiled and published in the eponymous book “WARTIME POSTERS 2022-2023” in 2023, supported by the grant program of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation affiliated with the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

“Ukrainian Wartime Posters” project is represented in United States of America by the nonprofit “Ukrainian Contemporary Art Platform” 501(c)3 (USA).

“Ukrainian Wartime Posters” were already presented three times in the USA—at New York’s Blue Gallery, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. In Europe, the project was presented twice in Berlin at the opening of the first European office of The Ukrainian Institute at Kassel House and at Theatertreffen (Germany), at 571 Oxford Road Gallery in Reading (United Kingdom), at “Okno na Kulturę” gallery of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland in Warsaw (Poland), and partially in Charleroi (Belgium) and Griet Menschaert Studio in Eindhoven (Netherlands).

In February–September 2024, the book “Wartime Posters 2022–2023” was presented in the Ukrainian House in Warsaw (Poland), the University Club of New York, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York, and at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University.

In late 2024, the book, along with the Wartime Posters show, was presented at the “Art Space in Exile” in Berlin (Germany).

During 2025 in Zaporizhzhia were implemented 8 solo shows of Ukrainian graphic artists and illustrators despite constant aerial bombardment and escalation of Russian troops at the city’s border.