A maker mindset and DIY becomes ever more important in times of struggle and conflict, as we’ve reported on Ukraine here, here and here over the last few years. However, while drones and other instruments of war and survival have been front and center in those conversations, Ukrainian artists and makers have been equally busy sharing their experience of the ongoing conflict in imaginative ways, including at four Maker Faires that have been held in the country since the start of the war.
Two of the more monumental efforts to do this have made their way to Black Rock City, Nevada as part of the Burning Man festival in 2024 and 2025. Always a haven for large scale experimental and experiential art, the backdrop of the playa and shifting day/night access provides a globally visible tabula rasa for expressing the powerful sentiments that have accompanied these distinct pieces. In 2024, Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai and producer Vitaliy Deynega–who has been involved in Ukraineโs defense since Russia first invaded in 2014 and served in 2023 as Ukraineโs deputy minister of defense for digital transformation–created a massive 23 foot high, 19 ton sculpture assembled from artifacts or war collected from liberated territories. The objects are bullet-riddled street signs, solar panels, satellite dishes, shattered city name signs, and broken fences–all objects of daily life transformed into scrap by years of conflict. Among them are several “pedestrian crossing” and “caution children” signs that represent people killed by Russian bombing while going about their daily lives. Says Deynega of the piece, “If you look at it from a distance, it’s just beautiful and bright, almost toy-like, letters. But when you get a little closer, you can see that their surface elements are covered with damage by Russian missiles, shells and bullets.”
Building on the success of the “I’m Fine” installation at Burning Man 2024, with a team the pair designed and built another monumental installation, which was first installed in Kyiv, called Black Cloud.
The name doesn’t leave much to the imagination — it is both literal and epically more than its initial promise. Black Cloud is a 30-meter-long inflatable storm cloud that flashes with lightning against a nonstop soundscape of real war recordings โ missiles, sirens, and explosions. The installation is a powerful metaphor for the experience of threats alive in the world both seen and unseen, with an urgent message: โThe storm is coming for you too. Get ready.โ
And come it did. Prior to the opening of Burning Man 2025, during whatthe crew and artists who develop the festival call “Build Week” and shortly after the installation of Black Cloud concluded, the dusty ancient lakebed known both geologically and by denizens of Black Rock City as “the playa” served up some truly epic weather, including 50 mile an hour winds. Speaking with The Art Newspaper via satellite from the Black Cloud camp at Burning Man, Deynega says that โa very strong and very sudden windโ came with only a 15-minute warning and broke the structure in half. โIt felt like one of your relatives suddenly died.โ
The makers responded to the destruction of their art piece with incredible resilience. “Perhaps this storm has taken the threat with it โ a quiet hope on Ukraineโs Independence Day (August 24), drifting away on the desert winds,โ a statement read from the team of artists. <link> Moreover, they rebuilt. Not the same towering black cloud with all its wild technology of lights, cataclysm of sound, and meters of fabric full of hot air; but, a strong statement nonetheless. Inspired by the line from the 1984 film The Terminator, โThere’s no fate but what we make for ourselvesโ Oleksiy Sai used shreds of the original fabric to compose a huge sign that moved in the desert wind, emphasizing the resilience of the human experience, the choice to resist threat both real and existential and fight them with hope, and the refusal to accept destructive experiences as a life sentence. <link>. Change is possible.
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