How to Steal a Country: Russian Edition — Invasion of Ukraine

Architecture is an instrument of power projection. In its research-based debut exhibition, entitled ‘How to Steal a Country’, the Vertical Geopolitics Lab details how Russia has instrumentalized architecture to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty from 2014 to its ongoing full-scale invasion.

This project seeks to decode, deconstruct, and analyze various case studies of buildings and infrastructure — innocuous built objects of the everyday — with nevertheless enormous implications for people a ected by the invasion. These objects 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 gallery would be transformed 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 plays in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. Based on open-source investigation, the exhibition critically highlights 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. Key invasion scenes employing techniques from theatrical set model-making establish sovereignty as a performative concept dependent on an audience. By studying Russia’s power project in Ukraine as a paradigmatic case, this project challenges the widely held notion that imperialism and colonialism are events con ned to the past. Rather, they persist as ongoing processes. The project disputes the notion
that practices of imperial-colonial expansion primarily rely on legal and cartographic means. Instead, it emphasizes the facilitation and legitimation of expansion through visual, material, and spatial means.