24.02. – 04.05.2025
MQ Forecourt

Panel discussion: Wed 05.03.2025, 18h, with Inna Shevchenko (activist and author) und Shoura Hashemi (Managing Director of Amnesty International Austria) | MQ Raum D | Free entry 
Registration requested at: veranstaltung@mqw.at
In English language.

A presentation on the forecourt of the MuseumsQuartier on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2025

Peace Plan is a powerful sign of resistance against the violence of war - a work by Ukrainian activist and author Inna Shevchenko in collaboration with French-Japanese photographer Elsa Okazaki.

The triptych confronts the observer with Shevchenko's face, whose mouth is stuffed with plastic figures of soldiers, tanks and weapons. What should merely be toys are transformed here into suffocating tools of destruction. Their intrusion reflects the brutality with which voices are silenced and lives extinguished through violence. In the central painting, the words “PEACE” are written on Shevchenko's chest in blood-red letters - a fragile appeal, a desperate demand and an accusation against those who consider war to be a strategy or peace to be dispensable.

“The paradoxically titled work Peace Plan offers neither consolation nor solution. Instead, it exposes the emptiness of confessions when aggressors are not stopped, victims found guilty or abandoned. The plasticity of the objects, which seems eerily out of place, reminds us that war remains abstract for some - a distant game with devastating consequences for others.
It is not a plea for peace at any price, but a desperate response to the criminal aggression and betrayal of those entrusted with protecting peace and upholding justice.” - Inna Shevchenko

Presented in front of the MuseumsQuartier, Peace Plan demands public attention and ensures that the message can neither be ignored nor dismissed as a distant reality.

Inna Shevchenko, born in 1990 in Kherson, Ukraine, is a writer, activist and prominent feminist voice. As a co-founder of the international feminist movement FEMEN, which originated in Ukraine, she is known for her fearless and provocative political art and protest actions. After political persecution in Ukraine and Belarus, she was forced into exile and was granted political asylum in France in 2013.
Through her writing, art and activism, Shevchenko channels the resistance of those who oppose violence and betrayal, transforming personal experiences into a universal call for responsibility and dignity. She is a regular contributor to international media and a regular columnist for the French publication Charlie Hebdo. Under the French presidency, she was a member of the G7 advisory body on gender equality. Shevchenko is also the author of several books and films and uses her voice and creative work to confront oppression and amplify the call for justice.

Elsa Okazaki, born in 1976, is a French-Japanese visual artist living in Vienna, Austria. After a decade in the advertising and film industry, she turned to the visual arts. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (classes Peter Kogler and Matthias Herrmann) and has been working as a visual artist, photographer and curator since 2009. In summer 2020, she initiated her feminist art space project SPACE2O.
 

KRIE(K)G © Inna Shevchenko & Elsa Okazaki