"Your City's T-Shirt: A New Regional Identity"

Illustration

Dates: July 30 – August 23, 2026
Opening hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12:00–18:00
Venue: The address will be shared with all registered visitors.

The exhibition explores one of the simplest elements of street fashion—the printed T-shirt. Normally, a T-shirt featuring a city's name and a local landmark functions as a tourist souvenir, commemorating a journey. However, in the context of martial law, ongoing warfare, and the forced displacement of millions of people, this familiar object takes on an entirely different meaning. As familiar place names and symbols are threatened with disappearance, local merchandise ceases to be a simple travel keepsake. Instead, it becomes a tool of resistance, a declaration of belonging, and a way of carrying one's home wherever one goes—even when that home has become physically inaccessible.
The exhibition consists of a series of thematic banners displaying printed T-shirts that illustrate how our understanding of "home" and belonging has evolved—from the silhouette of Ukraine within its internationally recognized 1991 borders to specific streets, destroyed factories, and occupied cities. Informational texts, together with authentic public reactions, comments, and discussions surrounding these designs, provide essential context and reveal how visual symbols become sites of collective memory and debate.
Each display unfolds a distinct narrative—from the reinterpretation of Soviet symbols and the revival of historical regional names to heated public discussions about how our shared past should be represented. This exhibition is about the memories that internally displaced people carry on their bodies and about an ongoing dialogue with cities that have been transformed beyond recognition—or that have temporarily disappeared from the map. Ultimately, the project poses a simple yet profound question: what names, places, symbols, or images would you choose to define your own identity?
As part of the exhibition programme, visitors will also be invited to participate in a workshop dedicated to designing T-shirts that could represent the city of Kryvyi Rih.
Featured artists and brands:Halyna Puzyrna × Wall31Oleksandr Hrekhov × KMA Gift ShopUkrainian Railways (Zalizna Kramnytsia)BezladPatrick Casanelli × Kharkiv ZalizobetonAviatsiya Halychyny / Ostap YatsyshynSome Urban Monk / Maryna SamokhinaDis/Order / Liubov MalikovaTallBoyCultoniPlnk StoreBagster / Dmytro VozniakMaikoffCurator
Zoia Zvyniatskivska is a fashion historian and curator whose work explores social and cultural processes through the lens of fashion, clothing, and dress practices. Her research focuses on Ukrainian fashion from the early twentieth century to the present day, with particular attention to fashion and clothing practices during wartime Ukraine. The exhibition "Your City's T-Shirt: A New Regional Identity" continues the research initiated in the project Textile Chronicles of War, created for the Documenting Ukraine platform with the support of The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).
Design: Dasha Podoltseva
The project is supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation within its Scholarship Programme.
Institutional partner: Kryvyi Rih Center for Contemporary Culture / KRCC.
Project partner: HART – a space for the physical, psychological, and social recovery of people affected by the war in Ukraine.
Kryvyi Rih Center for Contemporary Culture (KRCC) is an independent cultural initiative dedicated to developing culture, contemporary art, and the creative industries in Kryvyi Rih. Its mission is to unlock the city's cultural potential by creating an enabling environment for creative industries through the activities of KRCC as a contemporary cultural institution.

 Photo by Anna Balvas

Public initiative designed to develop Kryvyi Rih

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Public initiative designed to develop Kryvyi Rih

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