Israel in Kyiv: Zoia Sever’s exhibition “There, Where Home Is” (translated from Ukrainian – “There, Where Home Is”) became a conversation about memory, freedom, and the right to a peaceful sky. From June 27 to July 16, 2026, the new exhibition project can be seen at the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko at the address: Kyiv, Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, 12.
The opening of the exhibition took place on June 26, 2026, with the support of the Embassy of Israel in Ukraine.
At the ceremony, the Ambassador of Israel to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, noted that Zoia Sever’s exhibition shows Israel as it is known and loved: bright, colorful, warm, and cheerful.
This phrase sounds like an accurate description of Zoia Sever’s artistic world.
But in Kyiv, during the war, an exhibition about home, light, and joy is perceived much deeper than an ordinary cultural event.
Because today the word “home” for Ukraine is not just an address, city, or family memory.
It is the right to live.
The right to return.
The right to a peaceful sky.
The right to protect one’s space, freedom, and future.
How the museum presents the exhibition “There, Where Home Is”
The National Museum of Taras Shevchenko describes Zoia Sever’s exhibition as a pause in a troubled world.
The museum begins not with the artist’s biography or a list of works, but with the very concept of home.
Home in this description is a place of strength.
It is a point of support and at the same time a point of internal resistance in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable.
Home is what gives a person the strength to live.
It is a place one wants to return to.
It is what comes in dreams when a person is far away, when familiar reality is destroyed, or when there is too much anxiety around.
The museum writes about the turbulence into which the whole world is gradually sliding, and about the fact that in this movement, a person often lacks the opportunity to stop.
To stop not just physically.
But internally.
To reflect.
To remember why they continue to move forward.
And it is precisely such a pause that the museum calls the exhibition “There, Where Home Is.”
It is not an exhibition that requires complex preparation or art historical language from the viewer.
Its meaning is revealed through very simple, almost childlike, but therefore even more powerful images: sunny mornings, colorful cities, a morning cup of coffee on the table, the child’s joy of being, the feeling of “here and now.”
All this is connected with the place where a person feels strong.
It is there, according to the museum’s idea, that home is located.
Not only on the map.
Not only in documents.
But in memory, in the body, in language, in bright memories, in the ability to rejoice in an ordinary morning.
Peaceful sky as the main value
In the museum’s description, there is a very important image — a postcard from childhood, signed to a grandmother on her birthday.
In it, ordinary words: wishes for a peaceful sky, happiness, prosperity, love, and harmony.
Such phrases might have seemed familiar, almost formal before.
But after destruction, loss, despair, superhuman tension, and a sense of powerlessness, these words cease to be banal.
A peaceful sky becomes not a beautiful formula, but a real value.
Something that a person truly understands only when this peaceful sky is being taken away from them.
That is why Zoia Sever’s exhibition in Kyiv today sounds especially strong.
It speaks of simple things but does not simplify reality.
It returns the viewer to basic human desires: to live at home, to drink morning coffee without fear, to see the joy of children, to recognize one’s city, to believe in tomorrow.
The museum emphasizes that Zoia Sever’s works are filled with carefree childlike optimism.
But this is not the naivety of a person who does not know pain.
On the contrary.
This optimism arises from a clear understanding of how fragile and valuable everyday things are.
This is the strength of her works: color, light, and fantasy in them do not negate the anxiety of the world but respond to it.
Not by escaping reality, but by affirming life.
The artist between Lviv and Tel Aviv
Zoia Sever is an Israeli artist born in Lviv.
At the age of 16, she moved with her parents to Israel, and today she lives and works in Tel Aviv.
This biography makes the exhibition in Kyiv especially personal.
Before the viewer is not just an artist from Israel who came to show her works in Ukraine.
Before them is a person whose life connects Lviv and Tel Aviv, Ukrainian memory and Israeli home, personal history of relocation and understanding of what it means to seek, build, and protect one’s place in the world.
The museum calls Zoia Sever one of the most important contemporary artists of Israel.
Her solo exhibitions have been held in Israel, Germany, France, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and other countries.
She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and auctions, and her works are in museums and private collections in Israel, the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, Australia, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
Separately, the museum speaks of her unique style, called Kaleidoart.
Through this style, Zoia Sever seeks to show a bright and lively world where reality easily coexists with fantasy.
This is an important definition.
Because in her art, fantasy does not look like an escape from life.
Rather, on the contrary — it is a way to see life more volumetric, colorful, and strong than it seems at a moment of fatigue or pain.
Israel, seen through color and warmth
The Ambassador of Israel to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, said that the exhibition shows Israel as bright, colorful, warm, and cheerful.
For the Israeli audience, these words sound very recognizable.
Israel is indeed often perceived through light, sun, movement, street noise, sea, markets, family, city energy, and the ability to enjoy life even under constant threat.
But in Zoia Sever’s works, this Israel does not turn into a tourist postcard.
It is not just a country of sun and color.
It is home.
A home that also knows anxiety.
A home that is protected.
A home where people learn to live alongside pain, not allowing it to completely take away their joy.
That is why the exhibition in Kyiv becomes not only a display of Israeli art but also a conversation between two societies that well understand the price of security.
Ukraine today is defending its home from Russian aggression.
Israel knows that home cannot be taken for granted.
In this intersection, the main meaning of the project emerges.
Home is not only a place where a person lives.
Home is a place for which a person is responsible.
Why this exhibition is important for Ukraine
For Ukraine, the theme of home after February 24, 2022, has become one of the main themes of life.
Millions of people were forced to leave their cities.
Many lost apartments, homes, streets to which they were attached for years.
Many continue to live under the threat of strikes, sirens, and daily news of destruction.
Therefore, an exhibition built around images of home, memory, childlike joy, and a peaceful sky in Kyiv is perceived not as abstract art.
It hits the deepest point of today’s Ukrainian experience.
Home is what Russian terrorists are trying to destroy not only physically but also psychologically.
To destroy the sense of security.
To make a person get used to anxiety.
To make an ordinary cup of coffee in the morning a luxury, not a norm.
And that is why art that reminds of the value of simple things becomes a form of resistance.
Not military, but human.
Not loud, but very important.
Zoia Sever’s civic position
Zoia Sever is connected to Ukraine not only by her place of birth.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, she has actively supported Ukraine.
The artist participated in the creation of a volunteer group that helped provide Ukrainian soldiers with protective gear.
She also implements humanitarian and artistic projects for Ukrainians, including projects related to children and shelter spaces.
This part of her biography is especially important for understanding the exhibition.
Because “There, Where Home Is” is not just beautiful paintings about home.
It is a project of a person who understands that sometimes a home needs not only to be painted but also protected.
To help those who protect it.
To support those who have lost their sense of support.
To return color to children where war leaves concrete walls and fear.
For NAnews — Israel News such stories are important precisely because they show the true depth of Israeli-Ukrainian ties.
Not only at the level of official statements.
Not only at the level of diplomatic meetings.
But at the level of people who choose to be close.
The Taras Shevchenko National Museum as a symbolic place
The fact that the exhibition is held at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum adds additional meaning to it.
Shevchenko for Ukraine is not just a poet.
He is a symbol of memory, freedom, dignity, and the right of the people to speak with their own voice.
Therefore, the exhibition about home in the Shevchenko Museum becomes part of a broader conversation: about cultural memory, about national support, about how a person and a nation preserve themselves through language, art, images, and the ability not to give up.
Zoya Sever shows the home through color and imagination.
The Shevchenko Museum places this conversation in the Ukrainian historical and cultural context.
The Embassy of Israel supports the project, making it part of the cultural dialogue between Israel and Ukraine.
And all together this turns the exhibition into an event that cannot be reduced to just a poster.
It is a story about how art helps people feel connected to life again.
What visitors need to know
Zoya Sever’s exhibition “There, Where the Home Is” is held at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.
Dates: June 27 — July 16, 2026.
Address: Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, 12.
Entrance to the exhibition is by museum ticket.
Price as indicated by the museum: 200 UAH full ticket, 100 UAH discounted.
Museum hours: Wednesday — Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00.
The ticket office is open until 17:15.
Monday and Tuesday are days off.
The last Friday of the month is a sanitary day, the museum is closed.
Conclusion
Zoya Sever’s exhibition “There, Where the Home Is” in Kyiv is not only a cultural event and not only a presentation of Israeli art.
It is a conversation about home at a time when the very concept of home has become a question of freedom, security, and future for Ukraine.
It is an exhibition about a peaceful sky, which is no longer perceived as a mere wish.
About children’s optimism, which is born not from naivety, but from understanding the value of life.
About color, which does not cancel pain, but helps it not to defeat a person.
About Lviv and Tel Aviv.
About Israel and Ukraine.
About memory, which connects people more strongly than official formulas.
And about home, which is sometimes not only where you live, but where you have the strength to remember, love, protect, and return.