Yarema Malashchuk & Roman Khimei

‘Explosions Near the Museum’, 2023, video with sound, 13′38″

At the beginning of March 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost control over Kherson, and russian troops occupied almost the entire oblast. The Kherson Museum of Local Lore housed the largest and oldest collection of artefacts from southern Ukraine—over 173,000 items spanning seven thousand years of history, from Scythian gold to World War II weaponry. Two weeks before the Ukrainians liberated Kherson, russian occupying forces carried out a strategic theft, depriving the museum and the region of centuries of Ukrainian history. While retreating from Kherson, the russian occupiers removed about 23,000 exhibits from the museum. The short film ‘Explosions Near the Museum’ shows the severe damage suffered by the museum and the sound of shelling and missile strikes recorded during filming inside the museum on December 12, shy of two kilometres from russian-occupied territory.