Artist's battlefield collection in Kyiv captures lived experience of Ukraine's resistance
In a basement near Kyiv’s Maidan, Maxim Kilderov curates battlefield relics to tell a human story of invasion and resilience, with plans to turn the space into a museum.
A Kyiv basement near Maidan Square has become an unlikely repository for a battlefield collection intended to document the lived experience of Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion. Ukrainian street artist Maxim Kilderov has assembled a grim array of relics—rocket launch tubes, torn uniforms, diaries, and other personal debris—that together form an unofficial record of the war. Having spent 55 days under Russian occupation in Nova Kakhovka in southern Ukraine, he says the objects must be read beyond official narratives. He envisions an invitation-only exhibition that could one day become a museum dedicated to conveying the gravity of war and the human dimension of it.
The collection grew as Russia pressed its full-scale invasion in February 2022, assembled through military contacts, trades, and personal recoveries after nightly air attacks on Ukrainian cities. What began in his home expanded into a dense display of captured Russian documents and passports, helmets, weapons fragments, knives, grenades, and night-vision gear. An overhead Shahed decoy drone crafted from Styrofoam hangs among the exhibits. Among the most personal items are a smartphone pierced by shrapnel that helped save a soldier’s life, military unit flags commemorating Black Sea operations, soldiers’ drawings, and half-filled packets of cigarettes. Kilderov’s visual style features doodle-like calligraphy concealing symbols and messages of resistance that run throughout the space. A five-meter painting titled “55” represents the days he spent under occupation.
During that period, he helped organize underground aid networks, livestreamed life under Russian control, and spray-painted abandoned Russian vehicles with his symbols as acts of defiance. Since escaping west, he has staged exhibitions of his work, sometimes using enlarged QR codes linking to videos he recorded in 2022. He also designs military patches, creates art on battlefield debris, and sells rocket tubes converted into Bluetooth speakers, donating most proceeds to Ukrainian military units. In Kyiv, his rented basement has become a gathering point for soldiers who bring new artifacts and stories, expanding a collection he views as a raw record of Ukraine’s lived reality and of a solidarity he fears could fade. He has said that when Russia attacked Kyiv, people took up arms in defense, and he hopes the country can regain that unity.
As Ukraine endures its fourth winter of war, Kilderov is troubled by the return of inequality and division in a society that had been bound by urgency and shared purpose. The project remains invitation-only, but the artist views it as a tangible link between frontline experiences and civilians at home. The space is intended as a living archive of resilience, designed to remind visitors of the human cost of the conflict and the continued need for solidarity that cannot be sponsored or guaranteed by external aid alone.