Mickey Mouse’s Steppe is Daniil Revkovskyi’s and Andrii Rachynskyi’s artistic exploration based on the premise that more tanks were destroyed on Ukraine’s land than in any other country globally. The artists have compiled an archive of photos of tanks knocked out in Ukraine over the past 100 years. The starting point for their creative endeavor was the nickname German soldiers gave to the 1942 Soviet BT-7 and T-34-76 tanks during World War II—Mickey Mouse—for their two round hatches, which in raised position reminded them of the famous Walt Disney cartoon character. The phantasmagorical nature of this metaphor is reflected in the project’s alternate-history portion—a series of drawings supposedly to be unearthed in Kharkiv in 2153.

The exhibition consists of two parts:

1. Mickey Mouse’s Steppe: Archives, an archive of photos of tanks hit on Ukrainian soil from the 1920s to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine; the photographs are supplemented with wacky drawings of tanks as living creatures with a somewhat comical aspect to themselves. A part of the project was showcased during the From 1914 till Ukraine exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and was acquired for the museum’s collection. ONFAM will display the other piece of the Archives.
2. Mickey Mouse’s Steppe: Seekers, a film shot in the Kharkiv region in 2022. In it, the artists assume the role of scavengers, for whom abandoned wrecks of Russian tanks become a source of scrap metal, with the decaying armor gradually blending in with the landscape.

Mickey Mouse’s Steppe is a part of Revkovskyi’s and Rachynskyi’s larger project titled Museum of Human Civilization, which spans multiple years and revolves around the eponymous institution supposedly established in the wake of humanity’s extinction in the future.

Artists

Andrii Rachynskyi and Daniil Revkovskyi (b. 1993 and 1990, respectively, in Kharkiv) are an artistic duo utilizing an amalgamation of creative practices (installations, reenactment, video, archival art) to explore Ukrainian industrial landscapes and create their cumulative portrait. Alumni of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts, Andrii and Daniil have artistically explored collective memory since 2012. They were nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2018, 2020, and 2022 and were selected as the Public Choice award winner in 2020.

Organizers

Past / Future / Art memory culture platform and the Odesa National Fine Arts Museum (ONFAM)

Support

Mickey Mouse’s Steppe exhibition is supported by the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Fund unites the Government of Ukraine with its closest international government partners to deliver projects in primarily liberated and frontline communities that strengthen Ukraine’s resilience against Russia’s war of aggression. PFRU aims to strengthen the Ukrainian government’s capacity and resilience to deliver essential support to local communities in collaboration with civil society, media, and the private sector.