In a big war, there are no small matters.
The social gallery of the Municipal Art Center is exhibiting posters from the Odessa project “Letters in the City” with quotes that accompanied the Ukrainian struggle this year, starting February 18. The authors of these already popular phrases are President Volodymyr Zelensky, Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, writers Darina Gladun, Oksana Kutsenko, Serhiy Zhadan, Lina Kostenko, and Artem Azoyan.
Important! During the exhibition, you will be able to buy copies of posters and symbols to provide direct support for the Ukrainian army!
Letters in the City is an online museum of Odessa’s typographic heritage. The initiative collects and digitizes street signs, signs of institutions and establishments, posters of cultural events, and other inscriptions that shaped the image of the city for more than two centuries.
Unfortunately, for various reasons, most of these inscriptions from the urban environment have disappeared. We search for them through archives, old photos, private collections, in order to digitize them and give our contemporaries a fuller understanding of life, culture, and history of Odessa.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, we have opened a charitable poster bureau. Our love for letters has found a new purpose for itself. We create posters based on traditional Ukrainian graphics, typography, and boldness, raising funds for the country’s defense forces. Every day, starting from February 2022, we create a new poster. Today, there are over three hundred of them. Posters have visited 5 continents and taken part in countless rallies and events in support of Ukraine, exhibitions, and charity sales.
We understand that now the whole world is discovering Ukraine, and many Ukrainians are truly discovering Ukraine for themselves. We want Ukrainian boldness to go hand in hand with the country’s enormous cultural heritage in the eyes of people. The works of this exhibition illustrate the words of Ukrainian leaders – cultural, spiritual, and political.