Discover Ukraine: Bits Destroyed
Discover Ukraine has become a work of history: bearing witness to how Russia is erasing Ukrainian culture and identity.
When Russia's full-scale invasion began, destroying the mosaics that had inspired the original Discover Ukraine: Bit by Bit, RocknLight reimagined it as a new work of media art: Discover Ukraine: Bits Destroyed. The new show premiered at the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival in London in August 2022 — and has since toured to Copenhagen, Cologne, and Berlin.
In October 2019, Discover Ukraine: Bit by Bit brought fifty-six Soviet-era Ukrainian mosaics to life on the facade of Vienna's Leopold Museum. The project was conceived as a celebration — a way of introducing European audiences to a hidden chapter of Ukrainian modernism that had spent decades largely unseen beyond Ukraine's borders.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the months that followed, some of the mosaics that had appeared in the Vienna show were destroyed. Аmong them are works by Alla Horska, one of the towering figures of the Ukrainian sixties movement, whose mosaics were lost during the siege of Mariupol. What had been a celebration suddenly became an archive.
In response, Tais Poda and RocknLight reimagined the work. A new opening sequence was added: documentary photographs of destroyed mosaics, a record of what no longer exists. The show was renamed to Discover Ukraine: Bits Destroyed, and its message shifted from discovery to preservation.
The London premiere was supported by the Ukrainian Institute, Arts Council England, and the British Council. It took place across four nights in August 2022 at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, an architectural masterpiece by Christopher Wren, as part of the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival. Ukrainian monumental art of the 1960s and 1980s, projected onto one of London's most celebrated architectural landmarks.
From London, the project travelled to Copenhagen, where it was shown on the walls of the Danish War Museum during Culture Night, organised by the Ukrainian House and supported by the Ukrainian Embassy in Denmark.
In 2023, the show was presented at the Immer Wieder Aufbruch Festival in Cologne.
In 2024, it appeared in Berlin as part of the programme of the 20th anniversary Festival of Lights, projected onto the James Simon Gallery on Bodestraße, one of the city's most prominent cultural venues.
Discover Ukraine: Bits Destroyed is both a touring media artwork and a form of testimony: proof that the mosaics existed, that they were destroyed, and that their destruction is not the end - Ukrainian cultural heritage endures.
