Research-based Exhibition — How to Steal a Country: Russian Edition — Invasion of Ukraine

Built objects can become instruments of power projection. In its research-based debut exhibition, entitled ‘How to Steal a Country’, the Vertical Geopolitics Lab detailed how Russia has instrumentalized architecture and infrastructure to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty from 2014 to its ongoing full-scale invasion. This project decoded, deconstructed, and analyzed various case studies of buildings and infrastructures — innocuous built objects of the everyday — with nevertheless enormous implications. These objects, deployed by the Russian government as displayed in this exhibition, appear to be neither diplomatic nor military in function, which has rendered their use plausibly deniable, often helping them evade detection as potential threats.

The exhibition transformed the gallery into scenes from the Russian invasion of Ukraine using scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes, and tableaus to create an immersive experience, revealing the key role architecture and infrastructure play in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. Based on open-source investigation, the exhibition critically highlighted humanitarian aid operations, bank branches, internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities as theatrical prop-like objects akin to those deployed by Russia to stage ‘facts on the ground’ in Ukraine. Employing techniques from scenic theatrical set model-making, key scenes from the invasion established sovereignty as a performative concept dependent on an audience.

By studying Russia’s power project in Ukraine as a paradigmatic case, firstly, this project challenged the widely held notion that imperialism and colonialism are events confined to the past. Rather, they persist as ongoing processes. Secondly, this project disputed the notion that practices of imperial-colonial expansion primarily rely on legal and cartographic means. Instead, it emphasized the facilitation and legitimation of expansion through visual, material, and spatial means.