GRANTEE
How I Occupied Donbas is a project based on the personal memories of artist Alexander Len, who is currently fighting in the Russo-Ukrainian War. With the assistance of curator Anastasiia Kuzmenko, he documents three years of military service through objects, texts, photos, audio recordings, and artworks. The first stage took place as an exhibition in August–September 2025 in the Mala Gallery at the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv. Many objects in the show cannot fully speak outside their context. Each holds a story, an impulse, a concern of the artist. Instead of filling the gallery with explanatory texts, the team chose to preserve these narratives in a non-fiction book. It is a personal archive and an attempt to speak about the war from the perspective of an artist who has served in the Ukrainian armed forces since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.